Actions Speak Louder Than Words
by JeanBlythe
Summary: This story is based on the aftermath of that gawd-awful ending scene of 6.25. Like others, I am trying to "fix" it. How does Danny feel about being abandoned by his ohana when he needs them? How will the team come together and be a family again? Will Danny be able to forgive? Will this emotional turmoil hinder his physical recovery, and his partnership with Steve?
1. Chapter 1

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Chapter 1

"Okay, that's enough." Danny Williams reached across the wheeled table separating two hospital beds, one of which he occupied, and yanked the room's privacy curtain as hard as he could, blocking out his ability to see his partner, Steve McGarrett, which had the added bonus of preventing Steve from seeing him. He could overlook Steve's fatigue as he recovered from multiple gunshot wounds, the life-saving liver transplant as he received half Danny's healthy liver, the fact that he was on medications, and worn out from the flock of friends who had crowded in to celebrate his leaving ICU for a room he would share with Danny. But he could not un-hear what Steve had said about his son. It was a stinging argument, and Danny had admitted it hurt that Steve had not even thanked him for the liver donation, and in fact seemed to be more upset that the thing had come from the "negative" Danny before saying that Danny's little son, Charlie, would come in time to hate him as much as Steve did. Danny had only heard the last part over the zzzzzip of the curtain as he yanked it to block their view of each other and put an end to the argument. He also switched off the light over his bed, and refused to say anything, despite Steve's attempts to draw him back into talking to him.

Danny had had enough. No father ever wanted to think his little four-year-old son would ever come to hate him, especially when that father was Danny Williams. He thought about how much it had hurt to be lied to by his ex-wife, who had let him believe for more than two years that Charlie was not even his son. At first, she had told him she was pregnant with their second child. It was not an ideal situation, since Rachel was still married to her second husband, Stan, and Danny felt she had used him during a rocky patch in that marriage to attempt what was supposed to be a reconciliation with Danny. He would have married her again, when she divorced Stan, and put his family back together. Those months of thinking he was going to be a father again had been happy! But then Rachel and Stan reconciled as if there had never been a rift, and Rachel told Danny she had known all along that her unborn child was Stan's, not his. She had used him as the back-up plan.

Danny had grieved! He had still helped Rachel when she went into labor while Stan was away, was there at the birth of Charlie, thinking at the time that this beautiful child was not his, and how badly he wished he was. He was still his daughter's half-brother, so he was always kind and loving to the boy in those first years, because that's how he was. He loved kids. Even when they weren't his. Even when he saw them so seldom and fleetingly that only his cop's training allowed him to even remember what Grace's little brother looked like.

Danny still felt the anger and hurt when Rachel had been forced to admit that Charlie was his. The boy was very sick, and needed a bone marrow transplant from a parent or blood family member, to best survive. Rachel wasn't a good match, and she needed Danny to be tested to see if he was - because he was Charlie's real biological father. Rachel had known all along, but had lied to him, because Danny's job was dangerous, and Stan was rich. Stung and hurt by his ex-wife's betrayal, he had never-the-less immediately agreed to be tested, and saved Charlie's life by donating bone marrow to him when he was found to be a perfect match. The boy was now part of Danny's family, and loved beyond words, for Danny loved his children, and they both knew it and loved him in return. Grace, his daughter by Rachel, was now almost 15, and Charlie 4, and both called him Danno, and he would do anything for them. Both had been at the gathering, mostly for Danny, but also for Steve, whom they referred to as Uncle Steve. They were all ohana, "family" in the Hawaiian language. Somehow Grace had talked her mom into letting Charlie come with her to see their dad that night. He didn't know how she had done it, but was glad because he had two sitting with him, on his otherwise empty side of the room.

Danny had already lost precious time with the boy, and now Steve was telling him that, given time, he'd grow to hate his real father as much as Steve did.

Steve had crossed the line. A close friend would never say something like that. Ohana never would.

And yet Steve had. Danny wondered - not for the first time recently - if he was even part of the ohana anymore, the group that comprised the Five-0 task force, and the friends and colleagues that surrounded them. The people, his friends, too, or so he had believed until recently, who had crowded around Steve's bed with all the balloons, flower bouquets, fruit bouquets, some plush animals, and the huge stack of get well cards they had been saving for Steve until he was released from ICU. It was further, painful proof that Danny wasn't part of the ohana anymore. No one had thought to bring him one balloon or card, and he had been discharged from ICU three days earlier. And while Steve had visitors practically around the clock, Danny had gotten brief "pop ins" of friends on their way to see Steve. His best company was the daily phone calls from his parents and two sisters in New Jersey, and the visits of his daughter, and his son when Rachel let Charlie come see his father.

The truth was that Danny had been hurting physically and emotionally for most of the whole week since the events had occurred which had landed both him and Steve in the hospital. He and Steve had gone dangerously undercover as pilots of a deadly cargo of fentanyl laced meth, which was killing junkies almost every day in Honolulu. Steve was posing as a pilot with Danny as his mechanic. An unmarked chopper had come at them on the pilot's side, and the plane was shot up from rear to nose, critically injuring Steve, and damaging the plane so it lost all fuel while they were still forty miles from shore. Danny, with no pilot's training, had been walked through landing a fuel-less plane with two dead engines by Air Traffic Control, and had refused to land it on the water, which he knew would kill Steve, who he could not have gotten out of the plane fast enough to stop him from drowning while unconscious. Instead, he had told them to clear the beach because that was where he was landing the plane.

He had done it, too, safely enough to be able to help lift his unconscious, bleeding partner out of the Cessna and into the waiting arms of the rest of their Five-0 ohana and the gathered EMTs. He hadn't thought a thing about climbing out afterwards by himself, with not even an EMT focused on him, despite his cuts, bruises, and broken ribs. He was entirely focused on Steve, praying he would not die. And when the ER doctor at Tripler Army Medical Center, Dr. Isaac Cornett, had delivered the horrifying news that Steve's liver was so badly damaged that he needed a liver transplant within hours, or he would die, Danny offered his, since he knew he and Steve were the same blood type, and that Chin Ho, Kono, and Grover, being of different blood types and nationalities, would likely not be good matches. Besides, Dr. Cornett already had all his information on file, since he had been Danny's trauma surgeon and doctor when he was stabbed a year ago.

After Dr. Cornett had told Steve's gathered ohana that the transplant went well and he and Danny would be fine, Chin, Kono, and Lou Grover had been tested to be added to the living donor list, and each had in fact been found to be very poor matches for Steve. Only Danny could have donated anyway, and stepping in so quickly, despite his own injuries, had saved precious time, giving Steve the best chance of survival. It had been explained to him that he was not the ideal donor either, due to his recent traumas, and therefore the surgery might be more dangerous for him, but he had waved it all away. All that mattered was that Steve would die without a liver transplant, and Danny was the quickest, easiest good match. Danny had accepted the increased risk for him, and gone into the surgery with a hope that, whatever the outcome where he was concerned, Steve, his best friend and partner, would live. He hadn't questioned that no one had come to see him off to the surgery, except Grace who Kono had brought to be with her father. Kono hadn't said a word to him, hadn't stayed; Chin hadn't come; Grover did not stop by. It all made sense now, but at the time he hadn't given it a thought. Grace was there. She had stayed with him. Danny wondered who had stayed with her when he was wheeled beyond the doors to the surgical unit.

Now Steve had half Danny's liver, was on the road to a full recovery, and had not thanked Danny for what he had done for him. All Danny had expected was a simple, "Thanks," which he would have waved away between friends, had it been said. He had not donated half his liver to be thanked. He had done it to hopefully save Steve's life, his best friend, his partner, his ohana. It wasn't until the only person besides his beautiful, loving Grace who had thanked him was Dr. Cornett that he even realized no one else had, and he felt the sting of the omission.

But now he wondered if they were still ohana. The things that had happened - or not happened-in the past week had Danny feeling very uncertain that he was, and more and more sure that he was not. He wondered when things had changed, not just with Steve, but with Chin, Kono, Grover, Max, Jerry, Kamekona, and others. What had he done? Sure, Chin and Kono had stopped by briefly to see him most days, but each visit was either prefaced by or ended with, "The doc is in with Steve, so I had to scram for a few minutes," or "I should go check in on Steve. We're taking shifts so he isn't alone."

But Danny was left alone most of the time. Weren't they his friends, too? He had been shot at in the plane with Steve, had been scared worse than ever before in his life when he could not even be sure for a time that Steve hadn't bled out from wounds he could not see, because of the angle the bullets had entered Steve's body. All he could see was a lot of blood. Way too much blood. A dangerous amount of blood. He had successfully defied ATC and crash landed the plane on Waikiki beach instead of the water, so Steve would have a chance to survive. He had steri-strips on the cut on his cheek, bruises and a split lip from the crash landing, which had been safe enough that no one was more than bruised and contused, and Steve had made it to the ER in time. Being told, "Thank God Steve made it," was not the same as also being told, "We're glad you are okay, too." Not the same thing at all. Hadn't he just undergone risky, major surgery to donate half his liver, and lost his gall bladder in the process? Dr. Cornett had explained to him that the gall bladder was routinely removed when the liver was damaged, so Steve had lost his too. It meant they had to restrict their fat intake for awhile, while their bodies adjusted to the new normal and the liver halves grew back to full size – it was not a big deal!. The beach landing and donating half his liver were the big deals. So why did no one care about what he had gone through beyond that Steve hadn't died.

Had they stopped caring about him? When had they stopped, and why?

He had no answers.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Steve stopped trying to talk to Danny after awhile. He had yanked back he curtain and was watching Danny. He knew his partner was just being emotional, probably tired. His light was off, and his eyes closed, though his breathing was way too tense to indicate sleep. No, he was being ignored. Fine, two could play that game. Steve turned off the soap opera on the TV, even turned his own light down so as not to disturb his partner if he really was trying to sleep. But he didn't believe Danny was anywhere near relaxed enough. Sooner or later, the nurse would come in with their sleep meds, and then Danny really would sleep. In the meantime, Steve, also not relaxed enough, reached for one of his fruit baskets, and began to nibble on pineapple pieces. "Mmmm, such good pineapple," he mumbled, hoping to get a rise out of Danny. It didn't work, so he tossed a few small pieces over Danny's way. "Don't say I don't share," he quipped. He had strawberries, and let Danny know how good they were too. He tossed the long stemmed green tops over to land on Danny's bed.

Danny suddenly, catlike, sat up in bed, his face etched with hurt. "Seriously, Steve? After what you said about Charlie?" With one hand he flipped the sheet and blanket so the pineapple pieces and strawberry tops were sent flying back at Steve. "Are you trying to make it worse, because from where I stand, it can't get much worse."

"Now what are you talking about?" Steve asked, glad they were speaking again.

Danny waved his hands toward Steve's side of the room. "Look, I already know you got all the love: the card shop, the fruit bouquet things, the flower shop, the balloons that could float your bed if they were all tied to the railings. I got nothing. I get it. You don't have to rub it in."

"You jealous?" Steve asked in a needling tone, with a grin tailor-made to get on his friend's nerves. He knew the buttons to push.

Danny's hands went still, and dropped to the blanket, his face wearing an expression of pain that Steve had never seen before, one he did not know how to interpret. His partner's voice came out almost inaudible, like someone admitting something he didn't want to, that hurt to say. Steve's mood shifted as he realized Danny wasn't just being cranky, but was in fact really upset, so he listened without interrupting. And what he heard sent him into a spin.

"No, Steve, I am not jealous, because that would be wrong and petty, and an indication that I do not care about you. I love that you are receiving so much love. I love that you are getting better, that you didn't die. I love that you are getting visitors around the clock, and if that means I sit here alone, that's the way it is. Yes, it would be nice to have had visits lasting more than a few minutes, but again, I do not begrudge that everyone wanted to visit you, who almost died, rather than me, who did not almost die. I wish I had known Max was going away before tonight's revelation, which was only a revelation to me because obviously everyone else already knew. Of course I wish I had been sent a balloon, or even some pineapple basket or something, or a single crappy flower in a skinny little vase-maybe even one card. It would be nice if people had thought of me, too. Not instead of you, but too."

Steve's brow furrowed into creases while his heart tried to think of something to say that would help. He had assumed Danny had received gifts and flowers and cards, too, before they were moved into a room together. He had figured the nurses hadn't brought them in yet. "You know they care about you." At Danny's bitten back sob and head shake, he added, deeply concerned, "I mean, buddy, I'll share-" He stopped when Danny turned his head away, and his the low light caught the streaks of tears sliding one after another down Danny's face. He watched as Danny struggled to form words.

"I'm not ... sure anymore. I just wish..." He swiped at the tear tracks, which were immediately replaced by new ones. "I just wish I had something to share with you."

Steve watched Danny throw back his blanket and got out of bed. "Need the john," he mumbled and, with IV pole in tow, shuffled into the bathroom and closed the door. Steve heard the water running in the sink while he tried to think of something to say that would help. This went deeper than he felt prepared for, and was not going to be fixed with a verbal bandaid.

Danny was back in mere minutes, face splashed with water, face stoic, eyes averted. He looked more depressed than Steve had ever seen him. "Gonna go to sleep." But Steve's gentle voice stopped him. "You did share."

"Oh? What? Not this room. This is your room, and secondarily mine. You got the window, I got the door. In Hospital Pecking Order, that means it's your room."

"No, no. That's not what I meant!" began Steve, as Danny took a step forward. "I meant you shared your - "

But he never got to finish. Danny's foot slipped on something on the floor, and he toppled, eyes shocked, arms flailing, his body twisting to avoid landing on his back. One hand almost caught the IV pole and it went over, and Danny let out a yell of pain as he hit the floor on the side of the bed Steve could not see. He could only hear the crash of the pole, the yell, a lingering groan, and then silence.

"Danny? Danny!"

Steve struggled to get his blankets off and get up, hitting the nurse's call button. "NURSE! DOCTOR!" he yelled, and rounded the bed as a nurse came running. "Oh no," they said simultaneously. For there was Danny, prone, out cold, limbs all over the place, but his torso atop the base of the IV pole, his forehead on the floor, a pool of blood already formed. On the heel of one regulation hospital slipper was stuck a small piece of squished pineapple.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Steve's face froze when he saw that little piece of squished pineapple, and Danny's prone form. His memory watched him tear off bits of pineapple and throw them toward Danny's bed. His mind accused him before he could even put thoughts into words. All he could get out was Danny's name, twice. Two more words followed, "I'm sorry," as nurses and a doctor were called and Steve was pushed back to his bed-gently, but firmly forced to lay back down when his body didn't want to.

His ears were ringing, his breathing was shallow, and the little oxygen meter on his pointer finger registered low and an oxygen mask was fitted over his face. But his heartbeat was rising, and he kept trying to rip off the mask to ask after Danny. Finally one of the nurses administered a shot into his IV, and the sedative took effect just as he heard Danny do three things at once. He came to, cried out in confusion and pain, and tried to call for Steve.

"We had to sedate him, but he is in no danger," said the more stout of the nurses. "Stay still now, you had a fall. Can you tell me where you are, your name, and what day it is?"

"S-Steve's room, Danny, and the day depends on how l-l-long I was out. Why is it so c-cold?"

Male voice. "Pupils normal and responsive, but get a blanket on him. Shock setting in."

To Steve, another nurse said kindly, "You should relax now. You can't help your friend in your condition. Please, rest and let the sedative do its job." Why, Steve wondered, did doctors and nurses ask people to relax when they could only do so when drugged?

He fought the sedative, but it won, so Steve listened as Danny was put through everything required to get him treatment. Neck brace. "No! Please, not that thing," pleaded Danny's voice. "Regs," said someone female, voice emotionless. Steve hated her immediately. "Hate regs OW!" Danny hissed in pain. "Ribs! No, other side! -Get this thing off my face, OW, you sadists-!"

"Head laceration minor. No sedative until we get a scan of his skull."

"I'm panicking!"

"He's panicking, Doctor Emmet."

"Claustro-!"

"-phobic," Steve finished.

Nice nurse. "Breathe through it, Danny. Slow...deeep...breaths."

"Ribs! Can't...breathe."

Dr. Emmett. "Increase oxygen."

Nice nurse. "Slow breaths, Danny, slowwwww, take my hand, slowwwww..."

"Several incision stitches ruptured..." God how Steve hated that emotionless nurse!

"Bruising in area of liver. Possible left kidney trauma."

The sedative would not let Steve Panic. Not Danno's half a liver! His liver had to be okay!

"Dr. Cornett is waiting in the ER, we have a surgical team assembling in case it is needed."

"God no," whispered Danny. "Please God no. Can't breathe. Steve!" The last word was louder. "Tell Gracie and Charlie! Danno loves them!"

"I will, Danno. Danno, they love you," whispered Steve. "I love you, Danno. I love you too. I'm so sorry."

Steve could not even see Danny through the assemblage of medical personnel who were now wheeling a gurney out of the room, leaving Steve alone with Danny's empty bed, sheets and blankets rumpled. Tears began to leak from the corners of Steve's eyes, and he was unable to lift his arm to wipe them away.


	4. Chapter4

Danny felt entirely too familiar with Emergency Rooms. He was freezing, shaking, panicked, trying to breathe through the pain of simply trying to get air in and out of his lungs, and wishing he was unconscious. At least the oxygen mask had been replaced by a nasal cannula, which was not great, but a definite improvement from the mask, which gave him claustrophobia every time.

When he saw Dr. Cornett enter his room, he was both a tiny bit relieved and even more scared. Cornett was not just a doctor capable of handling just about any emergency, he was also a skilled surgeon who had operated on him twice, and Danny trusted him, but thought twice was plenty.

"Hello, Danny, I'm Dr. Isaac Cornett, in case you forgot" said the soothing, compassionate voice of the doctor. He put a hand on Danny's shoulder as he shook his hand, squeezing firmly but not painfully. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I was hoping to not see you again so soon."

Danny scrunched his face into something between a grin and a grimace. "Don't take this personally, but ditto."

The doctor grinned, and patted Danny's shoulder. "No offense taken. Okay, I've been filled in on your condition, and all X-rays and tests already run. Has your anxiety lessened any, or are we still at 15 on the one-to-ten scale?"

"Um, maybe down to a 9.8," replied Danny, responding to the doctor's very comforting manner. If he had to be seen by an ER doc, this was the one he would choose.

"We are making progress."

Danny asked hesitantly, "My liver? Is it..?"

Dr. Cornett did not hesitate with his answer, but his words were gentle. "There is deep bruising where you landed on the IV pole's base, and we are concerned your liver and kidney may be damaged. There is some blood in your urine, and the amount is not dangerously high, but has increased slightly even since you were first brought back in. Normally, we would do several scans, but considering the recent liver donation, Dr. Emmet and I think it might be best if we took a look. It means another surgery. We would rather be cautious than wait and have that prove to be a mistake."

"Slow night in the OR?" asked Danny, and he could see the smile in the eyes of Dr. Cornett, hear it in his voice.

"With you in the hospital? Not a chance."

Danny almost grinned, but then nodded. "What about my head? Wouldn't a surgery be risky?"

"All surgery carries some risk, of course, but you do not have a concussion or swelling - just some stitches at your hairline. You might have a thin scar, which your girlfriend will love."

Danny laughed, then grimaced. When he had been stabbed badly in his lower left side, almost exactly a year previously, it had been by his girlfriend's vengeful, violent ex-husband. Melissa had been the one to rush him to Tripler. Dr. Cornett had been his surgeon for that, and had met Melissa. There was no way, however, that Danny was going to explain that Melissa was back in New York, taking some "space" from their relationship. She had been gone two months, one week, three days, and 17 hours.

"Oh, well, that's...nice. So scars are chick magnets?" Danny swallowed, his anxiety less, but still hovering around an 8. "So give me the rundown on the surgery you want to do."

Danny listened closely, and nodded afterwards. Cornett wanted to go in through the original incision for the liver transplant, since several sutures had popped anyway and had to be repaired. A laparoscope would be used to see if there was anything to worry about in his liver and kidney area, to find the origin of the bleeding and fix it. Then they would fix the popped sutures and send Danny to recovery, and barring complications, he should be in his room by shift change.

Danny was relieved it was not going to be major. Probably. "Okay. Uhm. Just one thing..."

Dr. Cornett asked "what?" with a lift of his eyebrows.

"Um. Could you, would you wait to put the mask thingie on my face till after I'm out cold?"

The doctor's laugh reached his eyes. "We do try to accommodate our patient's requests. I think we can do that." He picked up the chart, wrote something, and patted Danny's arm.

"Doc, I am adding you to my Christmas card list."

Both men smiled.

An hour later, Danny was in surgery.

Twenty minutes after Danny was wheeled off to the ER, Steve was deep in guilt, his pillow was damp on either side of his head from the tears he had not tried to check. He didn't even feel embarrassed when the nice nurse who had helped Danny with his panic attack came into the room with his night medication. It was a syringe, which she administered into his IV line. "You need to sleep," she said, kindly, and pulled his blanket into place and generally saw to his comfort.

"Any word?" Steve asked.

"Not yet, but I will make sure you are told as soon as you wake up."

"I need to call-" Steve began, his words slurring. "...to call..." He closed his eyes, and his body relaxed.

The nurse watched his vital signs slip into those indicating sleep, and sighed. She wiped his face, switched out his pillows from spares in the closet. She turned to Danny's bed and made short work pulling all the sheets off, leaving the room. A little later, someone came in and remade the bed, cleaned the floor of sticky pineapple residue and blood, and left. Steve slept through it all.

Steve woke slowly, and realized almost at once that it was morning, and he needed the bathroom. He had not gone the night before. That made him think of Danny's fall, and immediately he looked at Danny's bed. It had felt so lonely in the room after he had been wheeled out. He was deeply relieved to see Danny in the bed, fast asleep, with the only outward sign of his fall the line of stitches right at his hairline, about an inch and a half's worth of very finely placed stitches, the kind used to keep scarring to a minimum. Bruising around the area was minimal, and there didn't seem to be anything else but the slightest swelling.

That was all Steve could see, except that Danny's vitals seemed strong. He had a nasal cannula to help keep his oxygen levels up, but otherwise he looked like Danny, sleeping. Sleeping deeply. The blankets were neat, not the wreck Danny usually left them in. Steve wanted to hug him! He settled for reaching over and squeezing Danny's hand before beeping the nurse. He wasn't allowed yet to make a bathroom run without someone to keep him from taking the kind of fall Danny had. Except all the fruit bits had been picked up.

Steve instantly felt the cold grip of guilt. He had a lot of thinking to do, and wanted to know how Danny was doing.

After the nurse came in, she helped him and then Dr. Cornett poked his head into the room. "Doc," whispered Steve, pointing to Danny. "How is my partner?"

"I will just take a quick look and let you know."

Danny did not awaken, and after the brief exam, Cornett led Steve out into the hall and they each sat in one of the pair of chairs outside an empty room. "His liver is fine, healing, though bruised slightly. What we did find was a very small tear on his right kidney, which we repaired easily. Already his tests are good, so, all things considered, his recovery is set back a couple of days, maybe three, but nothing worse than that. He has bruised ribs on the right, possibly a hairline fracture, but nothing we are concerned about."

Steve was relieved, so much so that he just nodded and grabbed the doctor's hand to shake, finally managing to whisper, "I was really worried."

The doctor nodded. "Good friends always are. Take care of that half a liver he donated to you. That was a fairly risky surgery he went through, but he waived all the risks and insisted we go through with it. Since his health was generally good, we - "

Steve stopped him. "What, doc? What do you mean? Nobody told me anything but that he donated half his liver to me, and saved my life. Was he at risk?"

Doctor Cornett spoke quietly. "Had the need not been so great, and time so short, we would have refused him as a donor based on the injuries he sustained landing the plane. Broken ribs, bruising, and emotional factors. But he insisted, and based on the judgment of two surgeons, he was deemed fit enough, barely. We took extra precautions during the surgery and had additional personnel standing by in case he showed any signs of distress. But he came through just fine, and I'm told the first thing he did after regaining consciousness was to ask after you."

"...I didn't know any of this. When you say 'distress,' are you saying he could he have died?"

Doctor Cornett responded honestly. "The possibility of death during surgery with a donor who has recently undergone trauma to the extent that he had is elevated." He sighed. "I cleared him for the surgery because I could see his emotional well being would be severely compromised if you died because we did not let him donate."

"Who was his surgeon?"

"I was."

Steve sucked in a shaky breath. He stuck out his hand, and Cornett took it. The handshake was lengthy. "Doc, thanks for taking such good care of him."

Cornett smiled and nodded. "Now you take good care of him." And he patted Steve's side. "And yourself, too."

"I will."

He stood up and pulled out a business card, then wrote something on it. "Try to stay out of my ER, both of you. But if either of you or a loved one needs a doctor, call on me. I get attached to my patients."

He looked in on Danny again before he left to continue his rounds. As he walked away, Steve looked at what Cornett had written on his card: he had written his private phone number, and, "No discounts for repeaters."

Steve laughed, sighed, and went back into his and Danny's room, just in time for Danny to awaken, pale lashes fluttering open on pale blue eyes.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

A/N: I want to thank all who have read and left comments, likes, follows, favorites—I am deeply humbled by this! I wasn't sure at all that this story would be read, so this has been a beautiful experience. And the story isn't over yet! While Danny and Steve are back on ohana status, we still have to get the others there, and that's not going to happen in 2 more chapters. We've got a ways to go yet, and I hope you will stick with this story and this journey! Thanks so much for all the kind reviews and comments! I love those! They provide insight into what you like and don't like, and in some cases give me ideas for chapter content! I try to respond personally to everyone who leaves a review or writes to me, and if I missed you, it was oversight and my weird mailbox.

Just remember, this story isn't finished!

I am deeply humbled by every like, follow, and favorite. Mahalo!

Chapter 5

Danny was not normally a heavy sleeper. In fact, he was an insomniac, verging on having a sleep disorder. His problem was that he had trouble frequently with relaxing enough to fall asleep. He had once been given a prescription for the lowest dose of a particular relaxant medication - essentially, a form of tranquilizer specifically to help one relax into sleep. But he never took it. He had tossed the little pills into the bin when HPD was having one of their yearly drives for the safe disposal of expired medications.

His reasons for never taking the pills were threefold: first, as a father, he never wanted to be less than fully alert if he got one of those middle-of-the-night calls every parent dreads. Second, as a member of Five-0, he had to be ready for the kind their task force handled, and as often as not they came in the wee hours and involved either driving, or being a passenger while Steve drove, which required more of a clear head than those times when Danny drove himself. Third, he did not like drugs, the feeling of being drugged. Once or twice a year, he might allow himself to have three beers, or three glasses of wine. He always regretted that fuzzy feeling afterwards, so his limit was normally only two, with a single alcoholic beverage being his preference. He had to set a good example for Grace, who was at the age when her peers would try to influence her judgment about drinking.

Danny had been aware for awhile of feeling like he weighed a ton but was never-the-less floating. He pitied the clouds holding him up. No, he decided with fuzzy thoughts, it was not clouds. Clouds would be soft, and whatever he was on was hard and unyielding. Floor? His brain puzzled over that until he decided the floor would be colder. It was not his couch, or Steve's couch, or his own bed, or the bed in Steve's spare room.

He was about to toss out the category of furniture altogether and move onto something else when he figured out where he was, and what was holding him up. He smelled pineapple and strawberries, mangoes and bananas, lots of flowers, heard the rustle of helium balloons gently bumping into one another. He was back in Steve's room, and the regulation-uncomfortable hospital bed was what was holding him up. Despite still feeling compromised in the working brain department, he was proud of his mental faculties. He knew he had made it through several hours post surgery, because he did not feel deeply sedated. In fact, he felt tired but rested, and that felt very nice.

Danny then took stock of the rest of him, and decided that maybe the nice part ended with the rested feeling. He realized his mouth was dry and furry, and held a medicinal taste he did not like. His throat was paper-dry. He wanted a glass of water, but not until he washed the after effects of the medicinal sock out of his mouth. Then other sensations started to work their way into his consciousness, the worst being a widespread area of pain in his torso, from one side all the way across to the other. Breathing hurt. He opened his eyes, saw something indistinct hovering over him, and squinted, reaching up with his right hand, intending to rub his eyes, only to poke himself in the eye with the clipped-on oxygen meter.

"Ow."

The hovering indistinctness said, in Steve's "best friend" voice, "Hey, careful there. Welcome back, Danny. The doc was by a few minutes ago, and he says you're fine."

"Then he is now off my Christmas card list, because he is a quack, even if he does good liver transplants. I am not fine."

Steve had a very distinctive laugh. "Put him back on it. He said you are going to be fine. No harm to your liver, and nothing worrisome about your kidney. But you may have some cracked ribs."

"I could not be more glad to have more cracked ribs, and he is back on the list. Steve, you look like a human-ish cloud blob. My eyes are not focusing right."

Steve said, "Don't flinch, and close your lids. I'm going to rub your eyes."

Danny was too startled by the request to refuse it. He closed his eyes, and Steve very very gently began massaged them. Danny suddenly wanted to cry, at the level of friendship and care just shown him. He burst into tears, embarrassed as hell.

"Danny! I-I'm so sorry, did I hurt you?" Steve sounded so worried that it made the tears come faster.

"N-no! Sorry for the waterworks, Steve. Just, nobody ever did s-something so caring like that for me before." His smile wobbled, but he felt happy and grateful. He had stopped crying, but his eyes were still filled with tears. "Now you look like waterfall Steve."

"Aw, Danny. Anytime." He was very gently enveloped in a hug. Steve did not hand those out lightly, so he hugged back. "Thanks. Uh. Sorry, it's just...that was the kindest thing anyone has e-ever done for me. I-I think I need a kleenex."

Steve instantly stuffed one into his hand, and put the box by him on the bed. As Danny dried his eyes and blew his nose, Steve chuckled. "Late one night, I was watching some show on the TV, I have no idea what it was. Almost seemed like a period piece for kids, or I dunno, very G-rated. Some guy referred to a handkerchief as a 'nose-wipe', and it cracked me up."

Danny laughed with Steve. "Nose-wipe? Well, accurate." He was feeling so much better, if he ignored his aching midsection. "You look like regular Steve now. Thanks, buddy."

Danny watched as Steve sat down on the side of his own bed, and rubbed his own eyes. "I did catch the doctor. He told me...what you did, not the cliff notes I'd been given before. I don't know why nobody told me Did Chin and Kono know? About the risks you took for me? Not the beach landing - that made the national news. But, you know, that the doc almost didn't let you donate because it was dangerous for you to do that."

Danny was not entirely surprised by the question. "Yeah. Yeah, they knew. They were told when Grace was told. I was already in surgery. Grace told me afterwards that she was scared, but they told her that I would want to help you. I mean, they were right. I had to do it. But even more, I needed to, I wanted to." His eyes roved over Steve's face and then body, finding all the places where there were healing bullet wounds, and the line of stitches where he had been opened up to receive half a liver Danny had been only too willing to donate. Danny focused again on his partner's deep blue eyes. "Steve, you were dying. I knew that on the plane. We were forty miles out at sea-what if it had been fifty, or sixty? Every second of every minute counted. That's why I landed on the beach."

He waved his right hand in a weak arc, and in his mind he was back in the plane. "The ATC - they told me to think about myself. They'd written you off, Steve. I kindof get that, like 'maximize numbers of survivors' and all that. I'd have a better chance of survival with a water landing. At least someone comes out alive, right? But how could I do that, Steve? I had not written you off. You even thought you were done for, but I didn't believe it. I'd feel your shoulder, and you weren't getting cold. I'd watch that pool of blood, and it wasn't getting bigger. You still had a chance. You were still alive, Steve. How could I land someplace I knew would kill you? On the beach, at least you had a chance. How could I take away that chance?"

Danny watched Steve lower his gaze for a brief time, then lock on his own eyes. "Danny, I owe you my life in more ways than one. You risked your life to save mine, so many times. You shared your liver, and ever since you did that, every day I live is because a part of you is now a part of me. I can never repay that level of friendship with anything other than to show you that I value you and our friendship more than any other person or friend in my life. I love you. -I want to hit you over the head sometimes, and I'm sure that won't change, but I love you, buddy."

Danny felt a huge weight lift from his heart, the hurt of a week's worry that Steve was somehow sorry it was his liver he had received. Even as the weight lifted, Danny recognized for the first time that this had been his fear, that his gift was being rejected by the man who had become his brother in ways that ran deeper than if he was a blood relation. He smiled, not a huge smile, but one of radiant happiness. "I would do it all again in a heartbeat. I love you too, Steve."


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N** : This chapter gave me problems for some reason, because there was a lot to fit in it, and yet it seems a bit ploddy to me. I thought it had a ways to go too, when all of a sudden the last paragraph happened, and that had to be where it stopped. I hope you like this, and value any constructive criticism. If you think I went off course somewhere, let me know, even if you aren't sure where.

I made up Steve's doc. He had a surgeon in the transplant scene, but Danny's was clearly Dr. Cornett, so I pulled out an OC for Steve.

Hawaii Five-0 is owned by CBS. I am harmlessly borrowing their characters. This is just for fun.

Chapter 6

Danny was feeling at peace now that so many anxieties of the past week had slipped away. He and Steve were back to being ohana, and that was the healing he needed the most. How that tall, cocky, loyal, control-freak Hawaiian-born-and-bred Navy SEAL had made it past his New Jersey emotional barriers to become his brother was beyond him.

Danny remembered all too well that their meeting was one of mutual distrust for the first few minutes, which morphed into Steve figuring out his buttons and pushing them for the joy of bugging him, and Danny letting Steve know he was not going to back down to him or let him run roughshod over him even if Steve was half a head taller and had virtually no ability to communicate anything but the most elementary of emotions. Steve had gotten Danny shot through his upper left arm during their first visit to a suspect's residence, but Danny followed through with the fact that he was Steve's partner - which was a lot more than co-worker or colleague. Partners watched each others' backs. They learned to think alike - or at least Danny had learned very quickly to figure out if there was a hair-brained, risky way to handle a situation, and a safe way, Steve would pick the former. When there were several choices of risks, any of which Steve would take, Danny had figured out which one his partner would choose, and he would back him up. The first test had been that first day, and of course Steve almost got a hostage shot, and himself, but Danny had been able to get into position despite his throbbing, bleeding arm, and shoot the perp before he shot Steve or the hostage.

As a payback, Steve had thrown a ninja move on him which, had he carried it farther, would have broken his wrist, because Danny blew up at him for not apologizing for getting him shot. Steve had put him on his knees with his arm behind him, his wrist bent very uncomfortably, until Danny had managed to get through to him that he "got it" and wanted to be let up, asked in Danny's best "do not escalate this" voice, when in fact he had been seething like a volcano before it went Kaboom! As soon as Steve had let him stand up, he had hauled off and given him the sweetest punch to the kisser he could give. He had sent Steve staggering.

Somehow or other, this led to them being trusting partners, and eventually, surprisingly quickly, to friendship.

"Has it really been six years?" Danny asked, and Steve smiled. They could read each other pretty well now. Except for when they could not. If something was bothering Steve, Danny had to play two billion questions with him to get him to open up. If Danny chose not to divulge something trivial, or not trivial, to Steve, Danny was hounded to death until he told Steve every last detail of what was on his mind. The hounding drove him as crazy as Steve's inability to think in terms of other people's feelings drove Danny crazy. They were partners, best friends, and ohana. In Hawaii. The whole situation was so improbable that Danny still had trouble wrapping his head around it.

Danny realized that Steve was pale, and looking uncomfortable, as if he were in pain. "Hey, you want me to buzz the nurse? You should lie down, buddy. You hurting?"

"Yeah. A little." He did carefully lie down on his bed, but nixed calling in the nurse. "My doc will be by soon, he's punctual."

"How strange that we have both been in this incredibly hospitable hospital neither of us wants to be in for a whole week now, and I do not even know who your doctor is. Or how you are really doing. My micro-visits from Chin and Kono...well, they never told me, and I never got the chance to ask."

"What did they tell you?"

Danny shrugged. "That you were okay, doing better, no sign of rejecting the liver, wounds healing, you were eating, were very tired and sleeping a lot. Put that on a loop tape ending with 'I have to go see how Steve is doing,' and 'we are taking shifts so he isn't alone' -while I was - and you have the content of my visits with Chin and Kono this whole week."

Steve's brows did a good job of rising upward in mirror images, at almost 45 degrees, so that his forehead turned into parallel rows of wrinkles. "Huh. That's so unlike them."

"You never almost died before, Steve."

"You never donated your liver before, Danny. And you could've died."

Danny shrugged again. "For me, it was a small risk. For you, it was a certainty. I do not think they got beyond thinking of you. I understand why I was never on the radar." He was feeling inwardly neglected again, because it had been a lonely week, but as he had said earlier, he was glad Steve was receiving so much love. That did not mean he understood how his "ohana" had let him down so badly by showing that, even with their brief and distracted visits, they were never thinking of him.

"Grover ever stop by? He's been by to see me almost every day. What about Jerry? Or Max?"

Danny kept it simple. This whole lack of visitation by his friends was a sore subject, one he did not particularly want to talk about anymore. "Grover, once, the first day, but I was sleeping. The nurses told me later, with great glee, that he told them to tell me to, quote, get my white ass well, unquote."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"Hmm."

Danny could feel Steve getting the bit in his teeth about this, and added quickly, "But Rachel is letting Grace come stay two hours every other evening. Twice she has let Charlie come too. Grace should be by tonight. Could we not tell her about the fall? I doubt Rachel would have told her anyway."

Steve did the forty five degree eyebrows again, and looked stricken. "I'm sorry, I never got the chance to tell her! Or Chin or Kono, or anyone! They shot me full of sedatives and - "

Danny looked pensive. "You needed the sleep, and I can just imagine how they would have resented me ruining Max's going away party at Rumfire." Rumfire was one of the most popular places for a large party. The reservation had been for the Diamond Head Patio at the Sheraton Hotel. "Pulling them away from all those fancy rum drinks and delicious seafood...well, they would not have liked that. Max deserved his party." 'That I had not even been told about,' Danny added sadly in his mind. He was starting to feel depressed again, and did not want Steve to see it.

Thankfully, the conversation was interrupted by the knock on the door, and as nondescript a voice as Danny had ever heard, saying, "Good morning, gentlemen." It was Steve's doctor, and Danny read his name tag. "Dr. Walter Simmons." He had dark, straight brown hair cut short, brown eyes, wore glasses with black rims, and would have been very hard to ID from a police artist's sketch as he looked just like a Generic Human Caucasian Male. He did have a manner that radiated good will and competence. He was carrying a small laptop computer. Steve greeted him and introduced him to Danny.

"Ah, and a pleasure it is to meet the entire donor of Steve's liver! That was a brave thing you did, donating. Not enough people are willing to do that," he said, and by the time their handshake was over, Danny was starting to really hope he didn't squeeze his hand any harder.

"He's my brother," said Danny, smiling, pointing at Steve.

Doctor Simmons glanced in confusion at the information he was already calling up on his computer. "It would explain the match, but the chart fails to - "

"He's like a brother to me," Danny quickly corrected. "He's my partner. We've been together for six years. I would do anything for him."

This confused and perplexed the doctor even more. "This chart fails to give you proper listing as his legal spouse. No matter, I will have this chart updated by - "

"We're not married!" Danny and Steve said quickly, in perfect unison, right down to inflection. Danny added, tiredly, "Babe, you explain. I'm going to brush my teeth. Dr. Simmons, it has been a pleasure to meet the guy who saved my friend's life. Thank you."

Danny did a thorough job getting the medicinal furry sock feeling out of his mouth, plus everything else he needed to do to feel ready to face more of a day. He moved slowly, and his ribs were unhappy about every breath. The right side of his abdomen was freshly bruised, right to the surgical incision, and both looked and felt sore. He knew he was lucky to have gotten off so lightly, considering that fall. It could have been so very much worse. His left side showed bruises beginning to turn that strange yellowish-green color, but his ribs on that side were still objecting to having to expand and contract with breathing. Danny sighed and shoved away the pain, as breathing was a non-negotiable necessity, and his ribs would have to deal with it, while he dealt with the discomfort.

As he returned to his bed, he was respectful of the pulled privacy curtain, but listened to what was being said, since it was the first chance he had really gotten to find out how Steve was healing. He learned that Steve had lost a short length of his small intestine as well as his liver and gall bladder, and was on an antibiotic to treat a minor infection the doctor did not want to turn into a major one. The bullet wound in his shoulder had nearly damaged the bone, but had stopped millimeters short. "I am surprised you can already move your arm as well as you can," said Dr. Simmons.

Danny listened as they went over any problems with the new diet, and Steve admitted he was having trouble with the restrictions. "I crave fats now. I never craved fats before."

"A common side effect of the removal of the gall bladder. But it is very important that you follow the restrictions on your intake of fats."

"And I crave waffles with boysenberry syrup. I don't even know what a boysenberry is. Danny does - he loves boysenberry syrup on waffles."

Danny grinned while the doctor explained that patients who received a transplanted organ often picked up some of the food preferences of the donor. "Be glad it was not a kidney. Patients often have their hair change color and texture to match that of their donor."

"What's wrong with the color of my hair?" asked Danny, teasing.

Steve answered back, "I am not a blond. I would not look like me if I was blond. You are the blond."

Danny chuckled.

Soon afterwards, the doctor left, after stating his pleasure that Steve was healing so well, and promising to check on him again that evening.

After the curtain was pulled back, the nurse came by with their morning medicines, and Danny got a look at the many pills Steve was now required to take. "Wow," he commented, and Steve pointed out three specific pills. "Anti-rejection meds. The dose will go down in a few months, when they are sure my body likes having your liver. So far it does."

"What's this about a fever? Infection?"

"I was told after the surgery," began Steve, swallowing his pills with a cup of water, "that I am lucky. They had to clean me up inside pretty good, because of the intestinal damage. That is almost a guarantee of infection, but thanks to my new working half a liver, I am fighting it off well."

Soon after that, breakfast arrived, and while it was not anything to get excited about, it was food, and Danny ate it. He could have eaten more, but he too was on restrictions as to amount and content. Frequent, small meals were the order until their livers had acclimated to the new normal. Within a month or slightly less, they would be full sized again, and then recovery would be even quicker.

Both were sleepy and took advantage of their fresh dose of pain medication to doze after their trays had been collected.

It was during that time that the rest of the Five-0 Task Force decided to pay Steve a visit en masse. They snuck past Danny who was resting rather than actually sleeping, and as they entered the room, they stopped by Danny's bed, briefly, before moving on to gather around Steve's. Danny was about to "wake up" and say hi when Kono whispered, "It's a good thing Danny's asleep. We can surprise Steve now. Visiting will be more awkward now that they're sharing a room."

Danny's mood plummeted, but he managed to keep feigning sleep.

Until Danny heard Steve stir and say, very clearly, "Awkward in what way? I would really like to know why this week you have almost completely ignored the friend you call ohana, the man who saved my life, who risked his own life to do that."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

 **A/N** : I want to thank each and every reader and reviewer! Your kind words and constructive critiques mean the world to me, and I appreciate them greatly! I know I haven't written to those who have reviewed the last two chapters, but there is a reason: Chapter 6 and then 7 were banging me on the skull, and I decided to thank all of you by writing them. 6 was a challenge, but 7 was a challenge-squared.

This was a huge challenge to write. This is when the fat hit the fan, big time, or at least marks the real beginning of the task of fixing the rest of the ohana. In this chapter, it is going to look more broken than ever, but not to worry. I am quite sure there will an ending full of healing, whenever we get there!

I am so grateful that you are enjoying the story. I appreciate everyone who reads and those who take the time to review. Chapter 8 is using a hammer too, but I will hold off on writing it a day or so, and this time I really will respond to everyone who writes a review. Thanks sooooo very much!

The usual caveat: I own nothing, this is for fun, etc., and to pay back those writers who broke the ohana in the first place. It's not that easy to fix! (Yes, I hold a grudge.)

Chapter 7

When Steve showed that he had heard every word Kono had said, Danny sat up carefully, and as the silence of Kono, Chin, and Grover lengthened, he pushed the blanket away and swung his legs over the side of the bed, moving as quickly and quietly as possible. He would have given anything at that moment for the superpower of invisibility. He could not stop hearing Kono's words, the way she had whispered, "It's a good thing Danny's asleep. We can surprise Steve now. Visiting will be more awkward now that they're sharing a room." The pain in his heart was far more intense than he could have imagined. Steve had heard, too, and had asked Kono to explain herself. "Awkward in what way? I would really like to know why this week you have almost completely ignored the friend you call ohana, the man who saved my life, who risked his own life to do that."

Then followed the silence. Danny had to get out. He had to get out of the room, and away from this. He did not want to hear how Kono answered Steve. She was waiting for him to leave, they all were, because no one had said anything. It had to be bad. He had to get out.

"Danny." Steve's voice was so gentle, so understanding. Danny's face contorted briefly, and he bent forward at the waist, as if in pain, or as if to duck a blow. "Partner. You don't have to go. Please stay. Let them explain."

But Danny could not do that. "I kinda think they are, with all this silence." He knew then, that it wasn't about this week. He wondered how far back it went. "This ... this isn't about a week." He very carefully stuffed his socked feet into the slippers the hospital provided. "I...I can't do this right now." His voice was an unsteady whisper, and he shook his head. "I can't," he repeated. He glanced at Steve, and his friend's face was so full of sorrow, and he knew Steve had just realized that this went deeper than either of them had thought. Danny wrenched his gaze away. He did not look at Chin, Kono, or Grover. "I can't."

"Where will you go?" asked Steve, and in his friend's voice, he heard only understanding.

Danny grabbed his IV pole, and pointed vaguely out the door. "Uh. You know. Out. Uh. Halls." Danny's voice was now as expressionless as his face, but he had pulled himself to full height, his dignity beginning to reassert itself.

"Okay, Buddy. Danno?" Danny was halfway out the door when he heard the name only those closest to him could use: his children, and his best friend. It was like a verbal embrace, and brought him to a stop. "Don't go far, okay?" Danny nodded without turning, and closed the door softly after him.

And then he started walking, carefully, and the tears built up in his eyes even as his roiling stomach became nauseous. When he needed to, he found a public restroom, reaching a stall just in time to retch up his breakfast, and a few other meals long since digested, followed by a prolonged bout of dry heaves. When those finally subsided, his throat burned, his ribs were on fire, and his breathing labored. He hit the flush button, then sat on the cold, tile floor for awhile, trying to catch his breath and let his ribs recover. When the pain reached the tolerable range, he left the stall, washed his hands, rinsed his mouth, and splashed his face at the sink, then made his way back to the hallway and kept on walking.

H50 H50 H50 H50

When Danny left the room, Steve finally let himself feel furious with Kono, although he kept his expression even. His green-tinted blue eyes darkened. He had seen the startled look on Chin's face, so he knew that she had not spoken for her cousin. Lou Grover had looked surprised, followed by downcast eyes, so there was something there.

"I'm waiting," he said.

Kono finally pulled in a deep breath. "Boss -" She had stopped when she took in the color of Steve's eyes. Her gaze dropped to the rolling bedside table she had moved to stand behind.

The silence lengthen again, so Steve turned to Chin Ho Kelly. "Chin? Anything to say?"

Chin cleared his throat. "Last week was chaotic, perhaps more than you know," he began. "There was media attention, interviews and appearances, and I took those on, as your third, and temporary head of Five-0. I meant sincerely to give more time to Danny, because he is my friend, and I know he needed...us."

Steve pursed his lips. "You were with me hours a day."

Chin started to glance toward Kono and Grover, but stopped the motion. "I let Danny down," he admitted, regret and acceptance of blame in his voice. "I didn't mean to, Steve. I hope he will accept my apology."

Steve read the glance, and knew the problem had not been with Chin. He pointed toward the door. "Go find him, Chin. I don't want him to be alone right now. I think he's had enough of that."

Chin nodded, and a few steps took him to the door. He closed it as quietly as Danny had.

"Lou?" asked Steve. "Kono? Either of you are free to speak. The sooner, the better."

Lou Grover finally said, "He shouldn't be your partner. I know he has been for a few years, but you chose him before you met me. He pushes your buttons, he still has trouble working the Smart Table, he gets himself hurt -I'm not saying he does it for the attention, but I wonder sometimes. That man will complain about paper cuts. He wrecks his knee on a regular basis. I'm not even sure he should be on the Five-0 Task Force at all, now that I got your back. He doesn't fit in with the rest of us, and as far as I can tell, he never has. Hell, he likes boysenberry syrup on his waffles! That's just...that's just wrong. He should not even be in Hawaii, let alone on Five-0 as your partner. He's irritating."

Steve was stunned. He would have laughed if Grover were not so serious. Steve ran quickly over the million possible replies, and only settled on 'neutral' because he knew he did not have the full story yet. When he did, he would definitely not be neutral. "So I guess it's safe to say you didn't visit him because you don't like him and want his job."

"I like him just fine. But that doesn't mean I think a whiner from New Jersey should be your partner, when I could do that job ten times better. And you know it."

Steve was angry. Not showing it was the hard part. Some anger slipped into his voice, but he held most of it in check. "So you want me to kick Danny's ass off Five-0, and make you my partner, and you didn't bother to visit him because you want his job, even though you admit you like him. Is anything I just said untrue?"

Grover nodded briskly. "Not quite how I would put it, but close enough."

"Anything else? Now would be the time to tell me."

Grover pursed his lips. "Nope. That's about it for me."

"Okay." Steve switched his rock-hard gaze to Kono. "Your turn."

Kono blurted, "He whines, Boss. About everything. It drives me crazy. He donates bone marrow to his kid, and whines about his hip hurting for months. His ex-wife is a bitch, but I still see why she divorced him. Now he's given you half his liver, and we're going to hear about every twinge and ache forever, AND about how he saved your life. When you got shot on that plane, I just kept thinking, I wished it had been Danny instead. If he had died, even, Five-0 would have been okay. But if you died, Danny would be in charge, and we'd all be driven nuts. I would be switching a Five-0 shield to an HPD badge, Boss. I agree that Lou would be a better partner for you."

Steve was so angry, his stomach was turning into an ulcer. He wanted to lash out, protect his partner! But he had asked them how they felt, and that meant he had to listen to what they said. Only then could he figure out what to do about the awful, overblown things he was hearing.

"So you didn't visit Danny because you thought he would whine about giving me half his liver and being in pain, and, what, brag about saving my life. You don't like him, either."

"And I was worried you might still die, so I wanted to spend time with you and be there for you. I mean, I do like Danny, but he can be a pain. He's Five-0's weakest link. I don't respect him. -He didn't even have the guts to kill the guy who shot you, Steve. He could have. We saw! Twice he had his gun pointed right at him, not even standing five feet away. But he couldn't fire. You want this guy as your partner, Steve? A guy who he could not even kill the guy who almost killed you?"

"And you would have?" This was asked to both Grover and Kono.

"Between the eyes," they answered in unison.

"Even though it would have been murder, and he would have been charged, convicted, and gone to prison, where cops don't live very long?" Steve ran his hands through his hair. "So why do you think he didn't kill the guy in cold blood, like you both would have? Despite that you each had your guns and did not shoot the guy, when you clearly could have, right?"

Kono shrugged. "He's a wuss, Boss."

Grover replied, "He's a coward."

"I want to know why you are upset with him for not committing cold blooded murder on that guy when neither of you did, either. No, don't answer that now, but you'd better think it over." Steve felt that if he heard one more word, he would explode. He needed to stand up for Danny, and he would, but he had to make Kono and Grover see how wrong they were. "If you could hear yourselves-!" Steve began. "Really hear yourselves! I'm...I'm so disappointed with both of you, I can barely talk to you right now."

"You asked us how we felt, Boss." Kono was barely looking Steve in the eyes.

"Yes, I did." Steve felt as if he were in the middle of a nightmare. "And you told me how you feel. I am just so shocked and sickened by what you are both saying." He leaned back in the bed, and closed his eyes, grimacing. He felt in need of his pain meds, along with a bottle of antacid. "I feel sick."

Kono and Grover both became concerned. "Do you need the nurse?" asked Kono.

Steve sighed. "Gosh, I have to think about this. If I say I'm in pain, you will think I'm a whining wuss, and if I ignore the pain and doc's orders, you will admire me for being tough and courageous."

"Commander McGarrett," said Grover, in his best compassionate wise cop voice. "If you are in pain, you need to speak up about it."

"But Danny shouldn't. You know," said Steve, finally venting some anger. "I bet you didn't even notice the new bruising and stitches on Danny's forehead, up by his hairline. When you came in today, I bet you only glanced at him long enough to see if he was awake or not."

Kono shifted on her feet. "Uhm, well. I didn't notice, so it can't have been that bad," she said. "Why does he have stitches on his forehead?"

Grover muttered, "This time. He's always getting something."

"As are we all. As am I," added Steve, harshly. "I get banged up more than all the rest of us combined."

"But you don't complain as much as -"

"Shut up!" Steve shouted at both of them, holding up his hand for silence. He kept his hand up until his anger was more controlled. "So I'll tell you about those stitches, and the surgery - yes, I said surgery - Danny had last night because I did something massively stupid." He told them about his teasing of Danny, how he had thrown pineapple bits at him, and that one of them had landed on the floor, and Danny stepped on it and fallen badly. "He hit his head, hurt his liver and a kidney, broke ribs, because of me being stupid," finished Steve. He didn't give either of them a chance to say anything before he continued on. "But then, that can't come as any surprise to you, can it? I routinely take life and death risks because I know that my partner, Danny, will back me up, even though I know I am risking both our lives. I never mean for him to take a bullet, but it happens. Or he injures his knee jumping off a second floor balcony to chase a perp who is doing his best to see to it that I don't live to see another day. As long as he doesn't complain or ask me to apologize, it's all good, right? No biggie! If I do something stupid and he pays the price, well, if he dies, Five-0 will still carry on just fine! You said it."

Steve paused just long enough to take a deep breath. "You know, maybe you're right, maybe he should go back to Jersey and forget about his daughter, which is why he's here in the first place." Steve's voice was dripping with sarcasm. "Oh, I'm sorry, he has two kids. Well, shoot, forget about 'em both, since their mother can care for them, and what kid needs their father that badly anyway? There's always Step-Stan. Danny could fly out a couple times a year, maybe Skype, and Step-Stan could take Gracie to the yearly father-daughter dances. If he's not away on business to Kalamazoo, or Timbuktu, or China, or England." Steve slapped his hand on the side of the bed. "Oh damn. I forgot. Danno loves his kids, and gave up everything in his life when his wife divorced him because she couldn't stand the stress of his job, and moved to Hawaii after marrying a rich guy so she can live in style while Danno spends his paychecks on child support and tries to manage in an apartment that almost triggers his claustrophobia, which is probably another problem he has that you hold against him."

Grover looked annoyed. "You've made your point, Commander. But it doesn't change things."

Steve looked out the window, obscured by Get Well balloons more than curtains. "It should! But nevermind. Obviously you two both think I am too stupid to figure out who would be the best partner for me, and the best one to run our Task Force in my times of absence or recovery from whatever injuries I've suffered. I don't see how you can respect me at all, since my judgment is so dreadfully poor when it comes to such an important decision as who is my partner. You see, I kinda like having a guy who would not execute someone out of revenge, who respects the oath we all swore to uphold the law, even when we do kinda skirt the edges. What's an execution and resulting prison sentence? Shows loyalty, yes it does. But I don't want that kind of attitude on my team."

He looked back at Kono and Grover. "Which brings me to a decision I have to make: whether or not to ask for your badges. Because, you see, with Danny, I always know where I stand. You both - I don't know about Chin, yet - have been lying to me and Danny for...how long? ... about us all being ohana. Your words say one thing, but your actions say something else entirely. I know now what part is the lie. Anything else you are lying to me about? Tell me now, because I will take it into consideration as I make my decision about whether or not either one of you is fit to be on the Five-0 Task Force. I will say right now, you are on restricted duties. I can't trust you to have Danny's back. Not after you admitted you don't care if he lives or dies."

"We didn't say that!" Kono looked and sounded stricken, with tears sliding down her cheeks.

"I heard you, Kono. Now both of you get out of my sight. Take the rest of the day off and go home. Think about what you told me, but be back here at 3 o'clock tomorrow afternoon. I will give you my decision then. Now I really don't care if you think I am being a wuss because I am calling the nurse to bring me some meds. Get the hell out of Danny's and my room."


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

 **A/N** : Um. This chapter did not cover as much ground as I thought it would, so the Kono/Lou part is still ahead. But let me explain! I love Kono and Lou too, and don't for a millisecond believe they would act the way they have in this story, EXCEPT that they did in 6.25 act waaaaay out of character, and I'm trying to explain what is essentially unexplainable. Don't shoot me yet! At least you get the Chin/Danny part here!

The reviews after 7 were especially great and I appreciate all who wrote, and all who read! I'm not done responding yet to the reviewers, so I have not forgotten you! I appreciate everything you say!

And I hope you enjoy this strange chapter. Um. Yeah. The part after the little h50 refused to unhappen, so I went with it. I am going to go hide now. Chapter 9 soon to follow!

Chapter 8

Steve heard the door close behind Kono and Grover, and then made a grab for the button which would bring the nurse. It turned out a bright blonde named Bridget was just coming in. "It's time for your-" she began to say, holding a meal tray and a little cup of pills. But as soon as she saw him, she stopped and immediately put the tray and medications on the bedside table. "You are very pale, and look upset. Would you like me to call Dr. Simmons?"

Steve didn't realize he looked that bad, and opened his mouth to say so. What he got was a digital thermometer stuck under his tongue, effectively silencing him for twenty seconds, which the nurse spent hooking Steve up to heart and respiratory monitors, and Steve spent fidgeting. As soon as the thermometer beeped and Steve could speak, he did. "I don't need the doctor. What I really need is for you to send a nurse after my roommate, Danny Williams. I need him back here. I just had an upsetting meeting with co-workers, uh, about Five-0 stuff, and I need you to find Danny and another of our team, Chin Ho Kelly, who is probably with him. Besides, it's Danny's med and meal time too, right?"

"Temperature is 99.1. It is time for Danny, too. His tray and meds are on the cart just outside the door. I saw him go for a walk awhile ago, but I thought he had already returned," said Bridget. "Take these, please." She held out the meds and a cup of water and watched as Steve swallowed them in one quick gulp.

"Could I have an antacid please? My stomach heated up when I received some bad news."

"I am sorry to hear that, Steve. How heated? Give me a number."

"9."

"Ouch. It is a common side effect as your new liver gets used to you. I'll get you something right away. Let me check your chart to see if there are any restrictions on which one we can give you."

"Okay, but I really need to talk to Danny and Chin, so could you check after you send someone to find them?"

"Oh!" Bridget frowned, but it was out of concern. "Of course." She turned on her heel and left the room. Steve lay back, wondering how on earth he was going to tell Danny any of what had happened with Kono and Lou. He decided he would hold off until he knew where Chin stood. He was really hoping for the best there, because he felt the task force unraveling before his eyes.

H50 H50 H50 H50

Danny had remembered that there was an outdoor patio for patients well enough to use it and their visitors, but it was all the way down the hall, about 3000 miles from Steve's room. But it was the best he could do for a place that qualified as "out", and right now, he needed out. Fresh air and sunshine would be a bonus. He needed to be as far from what was going on in Steve's room as was humanly possible. So he pasted a pleasant if vague smile on his face, and gritted out the long walk down the hall to the patio.

By the time he reached it, he was shaking from the exertion, almost gasping from the pain in his ribs. It was close to the time for his pain meds. But they were 95,000 miles away. He was not going back to his room until he was positive Kono and Grover had left. Maybe by then he would feel up to that long walk. He could endure the pain. He just needed a chair. Or better yet, he could take possession of the lounge he saw over by the corner of the patio, with no one sitting near it. There was an umbrella over it, shading it - at least for now. In two hours, the shade would have moved so he would be soaking up skin-cancer-causing sun rays, and frankly he did not care. His whole life had gone south this week. Funny how he never saw these things coming.

Carefully, he positioned himself on the lounge. He began to feel a little better almost immediately. The extreme fatigue he felt did not concern him, as both he and Steve had been warned that their bodies would commandeer all energy available to regenerate their livers. They were also not allowed to drive until further notice, and had been ordered to take at least three months off work, and lifting anything over ten pounds was forbidden for at least six weeks. Danny understood everything but the driving part. However, this one was going to bother Steve a lot more than it bothered him.

He moved the IV pole so it was in the deepest shade, noticing his IV bag was almost empty. 'Whatever,' he thought to himself. He knew he was dehydrated from the episode of un-eating half his life's worth of meals. He turned his face away from the the main expanse of the patio, a few other patients visiting with ... whoever they were sitting with. He leaned back against the little headrest and watched a gecko exploring the flowerbed nearest him. It was full of pretty tropical flowers, the names of which he had not yet learned because flowers anywhere were not his thing. He could not have named many in New Jersey, either. But he liked blue flowers, and none of the flowers he was watching the gecko inspect for insects were blue. Then he noticed one very small patch of one of the few blue flowers he could name: forget-me-nots, which were not specifically tropical. They grew everywhere. But that little patch seemed to be struggling. "You and me both," he whispered.

"Danny?"

Danny started, not expecting Chin to be standing next to him. "Walk louder. Hi. 'Sitting down and swapping stories'," he added, his tone careful but not unfriendly. "My dad says that. Pull up a chair. I do not want to know what Kono said."

Chin snagged another chair, matching the lounge but with no foot rest. He pulled it over so he could sit next to Danny. "I'm glad you don't, because I don't know myself." Danny turned to watch the bright green gecko, which seemed to feel very territorial about the little blue flowers. He didn't expect Chin to ask him about his recently acquired forehead stitches. "What happened there?"

Danny shrugged and turned away from the gecko and back to Chin. "I slipped on a piece of pineapple. Took a fall." Since sooner or later Chin would comment on his difficulty breathing, he just pointed to his right side. "Now these ribs are sore too."

Chin asked sympathetically, "How many times have you banged up your ribs in the past six years?"

"Lost count. Doesn't matter."

Danny felt the moment when Chin decided to come to the point that he must have tracked Danny down to come to. He heard the soft-spoken words slide gracefully into the silence. "About this week," he began.

"Chin, buddy, it's okay that you spent your time with Steve. I completely understand. Let it drop."

But Chin did not let it drop. "It isn't okay, Danny. You needed us, too. Kono was focused on Steve, because she was having a hard time with the fact he got shot and how close he came to not making it."

"I know she had a real hard time when you were shot so recently." Danny watched Chin nod.

"Yeah. That was another part of it." He finally noticed the gecko, and watched it pensively. "I kept telling myself we would visit you 'tomorrow', and a day would come and go, then another, until a week had passed. I don't have a good reason for not sitting with you, maybe bringing the chess board or watching a game." He looked Danny right in the eyes, dark brown meeting baby blue. "I came to apologize for letting you down."

Danny reached out and tapped at Chin's closest knee. "Apology accepted, buddy. We're good."

"Thanks, bruh."

Danny smiled. "Funny thing about words. 'Brother' morphs into 'bro' which in Hawaii morphs into 'bruh'." Danny said to the gecko, "The whole 'ohana' thing. I just wonder if I still am a part of it. I've always been on the outside, you know, because of the whole Jersey thing. Now... Grover only came by once, when I was asleep, and I think that is why he came then. And I guess Kono never intended to go beyond those micro-visits."

Chin looked sad. "What tipped you off?"

"You changed pronouns. 'We' became 'I'."

Chin half grinned, even if it was tinted with sadness. "Someone would think you were a detective."

"Or just weirdly good with pronouns."

Danny tried to suck in a deep breath, but that proved not his best idea. A tiny grimace had already thinned his mouth before he stopped it and sent his expression back to bland.

It was Chin who broke the silence. "Honest, Danny. I never meant to leave you so alone this week."

Danny nodded. "I appreciate it. At least I know I still have two friends."

"So you are really not sure anymore about Kono and Lou?"

Danny was again seeing in his mind's eye how they had looked when Kono said what she had said, and Steve had said what he had said. "Before Kono's verbal rug-pull, and the ensuing silence, I thought we were ohana. I never questioned it. I kindof have to now."

"I couldn't blame you if you did, but did you doubt me?" asked Chin, and Danny took a few seconds to form his reply. "For a brief moment, yes," he answered honestly. "Then I saw how tense they were, while you were, I dunno ... Zen."

Chin's chuckle was half what it usually would be. Danny looked up at Chin. "You're worried, too."

Danny watched Chin study the gecko. "Yeah. I'm worried, too."

h50h50

It was then that another nurse approached them with steps like thunder. "Daniel Williams! Are you Chin Ho Kelly?"

Danny whispered to Chin at warp 9 that this nurse was not the nice one and that Steve literally hated her. "Yes!" they both said, with fake pleasant smiles.

"I do NOT like playing Fetch The Patient, and I smell VOMIT!"

"Ahhhh," said Danny, while Chin Ho sniffed the fresh, flower-scented air and shrugged. Danny continued, soto voce to Chin. "I think Nurse Carla was a bloodhound in a former life. And she did not win the superpower lottery in this one since expelled semi-digested food seems to be her specialty." To the nurse, who was built like a linebacker, he said pleasantly, "It is remotely possible you that you smell a molecule or two of that because the guy in the stall next to me was having stomach issues. This is a hospital." Danny kept the smile in place, and noted that Chin was following his lead.

"Hmph," snorted Nurse Carla. "What did he look like? Patient, or visitor?"

"Ohhhh," said Danny. "I ... could not say!" He was not about to admit to offering meal gifts to the porcelain throne. "It was more of an audio experience for me than a visual one."

"Hmph." Danny was glad when she dropped the subject like a hot rock. "Commander McGarrett needs you both back in the room, STAT, so let's march. Mr. Williams, you are LATE for your meds, and your IV is on E!"

She set off at a pace there was no way Danny could match, not even with Chin's help.

"Too fast?" His voice was somewhere between 'apology' and 'don't kill me'.

He watched the nurse roll her eyes at him. "Fine. IneedaWHEELCHAIR!" Nurse Carla bellowed just inside the patio door, and Danny blanched. What seemed like a half second later, a person materialized with a wheelchair that looked ancient. He had a bad feeling about it. But it was the only way to match her pace. Danny definitely did not feel he could walk all the way back without passing out. He swallowed his pride and obediently sat in the thing, and Chin, now in charge of the IV pole, had to run to keep up with Nurse Carla as she steered her patient.

They shot down the hall, with the front wheels of the chair shimmying and shaking while making an ear-splitting "REEEECH!REEECH!REEEECH" sound, obviously paying homage to the music of the shower scene in the movie Psycho. Danny hung on to the arms of the chair for dear life. When they arrived at Steve's room, Danny whispered, "Jesus." Chin had to pry his fingers loose from the armrests and then help him over to the bed while Nurse Carla yelled in triumph at Nurse Bridget, who was handing Steve a dosage of something thick on a spoon. "Found 'em both! All yours." She and the chair vanished.

"Help! Bathroom!" Danny wheezed, his voice tight, words clipped and desperate.

"You look green!" said a bug-eyed, three-part harmony of Steve, Chin, and Nurse Bridget.

"Yup."

The bug-eyes were all still focused on Danny's even greener face as he whispered, "That race down the hall, Nurse Ratchet and that psycho chair ... another ... five seconds and I would've been ... catatonic. -Too late!" He reached for anything he could find to stand in for the toilet. He grabbed Steve's regulation little plastic water pitcher, which was still half full, and made his offering as everyone mobile scattered like roaches when the light goes on. Steve yanked his blanket over his head, and all waited for the hurch-gurch sounds and splashes to end.

When they did, Chin peered around the corner of the door, and Steve lowered the blanket so his eyes were peeking cautiously over the top. "Danny? You done?"

"God I hope so," he rasped weakly, now sitting on the very edge of his bed. His hand shook as he put the water pitcher down on his bed, where it promptly fell over and spilled, and everyone but Danny grimaced.

"What happened?" asked Nurse Bridget, who had risen from her hiding spot beside Steve's hospital bed and was now heading purposefully for Danny.

Danny managed to answer. "Finally met ... a worse driver ... than Steve." He slid down the side of his bed to the floor in a surprisingly graceful, slow motion faint.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

 **A/N** : This story is setting a pace I can only go along with. Twice I tore up the beginning of the chapter, so to speak, and started it again until it was happy. You writers understand this: sometimes we write the story, and sometimes the story allows us to write it. This is one of the latter kind of story.

Again, I appreciate so deeply all reviews and comments, all reads. I never expected to get this many, but a friend who has more faith in me than I have in myself said I get a dope slap for thinking that. I'm grateful. Mahalo!

This chapter brings us ever nearer the brink of Steve's fateful decision. Aaaaand, I don't know if this will please anyone, but I have a second story idea in the works, a long one. So after this story, there will be another! More 5-0 goodness! Gotta get through the off-season somehow, right? Read fics, and binge-watch previous seasons of the show! :-D

Enjoy this chapter! Advance thanks for all reads. I owe about 16 thank yous to reviewers, and you are soooo deeply appreciated!

The usual disclaimer: I am playing harmlessly with toys owned by CBS. I own nothing. But I refuse to stop playing. :-)

Chapter 9

Many things happened in the following hour, preventing Steve from talking to Danny or Chin, though Steve did signal Chin to stay, because they needed to talk when the whirlwind following Danny's faint had subsided. Dr. Cornett was paged, and he arrived on a run just as the nurses had finished cleaning Danny up and putting him in a new hospital gown over lightweight pajama pants. His bed, Steve's bed, and room had already been cleaned of any evidence of the distressing interlude before the faint. Also gone were the fruit baskets, flowers and all but a few of the balloons. Even while the cleaning process was going on, Steve and Chin were relegated to staying behind the new privacy curtain in the room. Steve wondered if the walls would be repainted. They weren't, but they were wiped down.

Naturally, Steve and Danny both got new regulation plastic water pitchers (even filled with water and ice), cups, and this time they were not orange. This time they were generic blue.

Danny had regained consciousness only a minute after fainting, but his faculties were not up to par, his energy even less so. He answered every question briefly and honestly, in a voice so tired that Dr. Cornett pulled back the curtain and asked Steve and Chin to fill in anything they had seen or noticed while Danny was fitted with a nasal cannula as well as two different IVs. One was fluids and electrolytes, while the other was to begin steadying out his nutritional needs.

Chin proved to be a big help, and at the news of Nurse Carla's treatment of his patient, Dr. Cornett's manner changed just enough to make it quite clear he was furious and going to do something about it. Steve could swear he saw thunderclouds and lightning in Cornett's normally pale blue eyes. He ordered blood and urine samples taken, put a priority on the results, frowned at the number on the thermometer, and began generally do do everything he could to care for his patient.

"My eyes won't stay open," said Danny, sitting up in his bed. He sounded like a little kid about 5 years old, fighting bedtime, and losing. His stillness and the weak way he was holding his ribs spoke volumes.

"Could you keep them open just long enough to take two more deep breaths?" asked Cornett in his gentle, doctor's voice. He was listening to Danny's lungs with his stethoscope. "I know it hurts, and I know you are very tired. Just two more, as deep as you can give me."

Steve watched Danny give it his best, too weary to do more than grimace.

"Okay, you can close your eyes now. Let me do all the work for you as you settle back onto the pillow. Get some sleep."

Without any fanfare other than closing his eyes as his hands went limp, Danny fell asleep as Dr. Cornett used one hand to hold Danny upright, the other still holding his stethoscope against his back. The doc listened to his breathing in sleep, and shook his head as he closed Danny's gown, then settled him comfortably against his pillow. He pulled the blanket over his patient's chest, literally tucking him in.

Steve was instantly worried. "Is he okay?"

Dr. Cornett looked at his patient, studied the reading of the machines now monitoring his vitals. "His breathing is too shallow, and that worries me more than anything else. We have to watch for fluid build-up in his lungs. I'm afraid he has to go back on an oxygen mask."

"But those give him panic attacks."

Cornett nodded. "I know. So I will sedate him, once I get the lab results back and know how much he can tolerate. He will never know the mask was even in place. Everything else we can fix with IV fluids and medications. I think he will breathe much easier after he has had at least twelve hours of good sleep. I'm revoking his hall-wandering privileges for at least a day and a half."

Chin asked, "What about that nurse?"

Cornett's jaw tensed, and Steve saw the thunderclouds and lightning again. "I think her nursing career may be over. She will never bother you again."

Steve and Chin were satisfied with that.

Just then the lab results came in. A few minutes later, Cornett had ordered treatments, personally injected medications into the hydration IV. "It seems he has picked up a bacterial infection, which is being cultured right now. I have put him on an antibiotic he has tolerated well in the past." The doc rattled off a litany of other medications, and almost ceremoniously removed the nasal cannula, fitting the oxygen mask in place. "Let's see how he responds to a healthy twelve hours of sleep. I'll check him again in six. Now, Steve, would you mind if I give you a once-over? Doc Simmons is going to be tied up in surgery for a few more hours, and asked me to check on you. I am well-versed on your chart."

"Sure, Doc." Steve trusted Cornett. Chin stepped out to get himself something to eat, but would return in a half hour with tea for both him and Steve.

When the exam was over, Steve was back in bed, the head propped up so he could sleep, rest, or visit in comfort. "Doc, could you add an antacid? Is there something I could keep in my room?" The answer was affirmitive, but Steve was reminded to heed the dosage.

"Now you get some rest. You are healing very well, but it will be quite awhile yet before you feel even close to your usual self."

Steve glanced over at Danny, then took advantage of Chin's absence to ask Cornett something that worried him. "I've called a meeting of the Task Force, uh, for tomorrow at 3. Will Danny ... will he be up for that? I mean, able to handle it? It may be emotionally upsetting for him, but he needs to be there. And I need to tell him what it's about, uh, beforehand."

Steve watched Cornett read between the lines before answering. "I can see you would not ask this if the meeting could be rescheduled. I would rather not add to Danny's emotional challenges right now." Cornett turned to study Danny's vital readings, displayed on monitors behind his bed. "Let's see how he is in twelve hours. He's tough. I can't promise a 'yes', but my guess is that he will be strong enough, though I reserve the right to administer a mild sedative to help him through. Both of you will have to rest afterwards."

"Good enough," replied Steve. "Good enough. Thanks Doc."

H50 H50 H50

Steve was resting quietly when Chin returned with a tray of two Styrofoam cups of tea, and two additional cups of chicken soup. "I had some in the cafeteria, and it was so good I thought you and Danny might like some. They let me have some 'to go'." He stopped by Danny's bed. "He looks temporarily down for the count. How is he, Steve? Anything I didn't hear? And how is the head of Five-0 doing?"

"I'm doing good, Chin. Have to rest a lot, and all the stuff you already know about. As for Danny, no, nothing new. He's likely going to sleep through Grace's visit tonight."

Chin sighed, and came around to sit by Steve, putting the tray on his bedside table. His deep brown eyes were still on Danny. "I feel so badly for how things have gone for him this whole week," he said in the soft voice of a good friend.

"Yeah," said Steve, keeping his voice low, even though he knew Danny couldn't hear them. "He's sure had it rough. I still can't believe he did what he did. I mean, giving me half his liver?"

"You would be dead if he hadn't, Steve."

"It's very humbling. I'm alive because of him. Half Danny's liver is inside me, Chin, and because of that, I am talking to you right now."

Chin handed a cup of tea to Steve, and held up his own. "To Danny?"

Steve nodded, and accepted the cup. "To my best friend and partner, Danny."

They touched cups, and each drank a sip.

Chin pointed to the chicken soup. "I'm sure he would want you to have this."

Steve watched his sleeping friend with gentle eyes. "He missed his meal. The IV has to do, and that makes me feel worse. I know I couldn't have done anything to change things, but I wish he hadn't missed his meal."

Chin Ho took another sip of the tea. "What was it, anyway?"

Steve laughed softly. "I have no idea, honestly. It was like a mixture of oatmeal, mashed potato with no butter, no anything, and some kind of fish. Once you got past the texture, it wasn't too bad."

The face Chin made at the description was eloquent. "No way would Danny have eaten that! Or me, either!"

"I dunno, Chin; he's been good about the chow, eating it. But you are right about that soup. He would not want it wasted, and it smells really good. Even with the lid, it smells good." He popped the lid off one cup. "Wow, that smells sooooo good. But I can't eat both of them. You have the other one."

"You sure?"

Steve nodded. So both men enjoyed their chicken soup and hot tea.

Afterwards, Steve was not surprised at all when Chin brought up Kono, his cousin, and Lou Grover. He'd been expecting it. "Steve, what happened? What did they say?"

So Steve told him everything, holding nothing back.

Chin finally said, "Wow," in a voice filled with sad incredulity. He was leaning forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees while his fingertips rubbed his temples. "If anyone else told me this, I would deck them for lying."

"I'm still getting my head around this, too. Listen, Chin ... I have to ask. Do you agree with either one of them, about any of this?"

Chin sat back, one hand still rubbing his forehead, easing a headache that hit after Steve told him what his cousin and colleague had said. "Do I agree with them? Either of them? No. If they truly mean what they said ... then I'm way beyond shocked." He looked over at Danny. "This would kill him to know. Maybe not his body, but his spirit."

"But I have to tell him. I told Kono and Grover to be here tomorrow at 3 o'clock, and I would make the decision whether or not to ask for their badges."

Chin's head snapped up as he stared at Steve. He said nothing for a full minute. "Well, you know what Danny will do when you tell him that."

"Yes I do," said Steve, his voice very sad. "He'd resign. He'd say they were right, and he'd put his shield and gun on the table, so quietly we'd barely hear it, he'd turn and leave without another word."

"Yeah."

Steve's words came quicker, and only his concern for his sleeping friend in the next bed kept his voice from rising in volume. "But it would destroy Five-0. If he did that, Five-0 would be me, bleeding out, with no liver donor. HE is the reason this unit works so well, Chin. Do you get why I'm saying that?"

Chin slowly nodded. "You two balance each other. It's so weird to see it happening sometimes, the way you two get each other, the way you two push each others' buttons, argue like an old couple married happy for 60 years. Now I think he's going to punch you out -"

"-and sometimes he does!"

"Other times I think you are gonna punch him out -"

"-and sometimes I do!"

"But God help the person who tries to get between you. It's incredible to watch, Steve. It's a partnership, but even more than that, it's a friendship that most people will never experience in their lives."

"I never saw Danny coming," said Steve.

"I don't think anyone sees this kind of ...ohana... coming. Have you made your decision?"

"No. Not yet. I need your help with something. Badly."

Chin sat up straighter. "Ask. I'll do it."

"I need your help trying to change their minds about Danno. This is what I need you to do..." Steve rattled off a long list of things he wanted brought to his room before the meeting. "Can you do all that, Chin?"

"I'll be back here in ..." He consulted his watch. "Two hours, maximum three."

"Thanks, Chin." Steve knew the words were inadequate. Chin smiled, give him a handshake and fist bump, then stopped by Danny's bed and lowered his forehead until it was touching Danny's. He whispered, "Sleep well, ohana."

A minute later, Steve was listening to Danny breathing, watching his friend's breath fog and clear and fog the oxygen mask. "Danny," he said softly. "You have to get better. I never saw you coming, Buddy, but I'm not letting you go."


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

A/N: Again, thank you for all reviews and reads! You have been so thoughtful that I literally felt the best thanks I could give was to get this chapter out. The next one will be The Meeting, but this one had to set that up.

I love this show, and the characters, and while I am definitely first and foremost a Danny/McDanno fan, there are characters I wish I had been able to fit into this. I am used to writing novels, so the length of this does not surprise me. I could have reduced this chapter to 4 paragraphs, but that would have been shortchanging the journey to get to the end. I don't write that way. Each scene gets its due. To those who want me to just GET THERE ALREADY, 11 is coming. Have hope. Like Danny, have hope. That's all I ask.

The usual disclaimer: CBS owns the toys I am playing harmlessly with. I make money or goods from this, gain nothing but readers and friends.

Chapter 10

It was closer to four hours later that Chin brought a lidded file-sized box of items back into the room shared by Steve and Danny. Twice Chin had called, to explain his delay. Once it was because he was stuck in traffic, and other time was because the office printer jammed so he had to have maintenance come and fix it. But when he finally arrived, he gave a groggy Steve the thumb's up. "I got everything you asked for, Boss."

Steve rubbed sleep out of his blue eyes, thanked Chin, and then studied Danny, still sleeping with his oxygen mask undisturbed. He had a new saline drip bag, and two others. "Rachel called. Gracie will be coming earlier than originally planned, but she gets to stay an hour longer, so that's good. Except Danny will be asleep for most of that. She should be here in an hour, which is just about when the doc is returning, so let's make sure she enjoys the visit with Uncle Steve and Uncle Chin. -If you can stay?"

"Sure!" replied Chin. "I can stay for at least part of it, maybe get us all some food or something."

Steve began pulling things out of the box. He nodded after he saw everything he had asked for. "You even lined up the files in order, and these," he held up a CD and several thumb drives, "are our Star Witnesses." He held up the CD. "I haven't even heard this yet, so I'm a little nervous about it."

Chin blew out a breath. "The only person in this room who has heard this is Danny, and he may not be too happy to hear it again, but it's important we all hear it together. Do you think any of this will change Kono or Lou's minds?"

Steve was quiet for awhile. "Honestly?" he finally answered. "Honestly, probably not, if they really believe what they said. My hope is that they are doing some thinking, and that maybe they will change their own minds."

"Guess we'll find out tomorrow."

"Say some prayers, Chin."

"Covered."

H50 H50 H50 H50

The Doc arrived punctually, and greeted Steve and Chin before checking his patient. He was displeased about Danny's fever, which had risen three-tenths of a degree. "If it goes any higher, I'm switching the antibiotic."

"Why?" asked Grace, just arriving at the room. "And why is my Daddy sleeping?" Steve motioned her over to join him, but she was in her "guard" position at Danny's bedside.

Dr. Cornett recognized her and greeted her by name. "I'm your daddy's doctor. He's caught an infection, and I'm not letting it get worse."

Steve watched Grace feel Danno's forehead. "He does feel warm. Is he going to be okay? And why does he have more stitches?" Of course she had noticed them instantly.

"Yes, your Daddy is going to be okay. Especially now that you are here. The stitches are from a fall he took a couple nights back. See his heart rate there?" Cornett pointed out the green line on the machine, neatly distracting her from the stitches. "Put your hand back on his arm." Grace did so, and the green line grew a little bit stronger and steadier. "He knows you are here, and he feels better for it."

Grace smiled happily. But then she frowned. "He doesn't like the face mask." With a bit of a flourish, the doc produced a syringe. "If we don't tell him it was on, he won't know. This is to help him sleep through it."

After he had administered it to the saline line, Grace entered happily into the conspiracy of keeping Danny in the dark about the oxygen mask. She listened as the need for it was explained, and nodded.

Steve was checked again, too. "Tomorrow we can switch you to a lighter dressing. Just remain cautious about lifting or sudden movements of the abdomen. Give the tissues plenty of time to heal."

H50 H50 H50 H50

The evening passed quietly, with Grace content to hold her father's hand while she watched TV with Steve and Chin. But eventually Chin bade them both good night and Steve returned his wave. There was a lot of meaning in the unblinking look that passed between Steve and Chin when the dark-haired man on the bed said, "See you tomorrow."

"Count on it," replied Chin to his boss, before he patted Danny's arm and whispered softly to him to rest, then left.

That left Steve alone with Danny's daughter, who he thought of as his own flesh and blood. Gracie had been calling him Uncle Steve for years, and he felt like her Uncle. Danny was like a brother to him. Therefore, his child was Steve's niece, and he loved her as he would love his own child. Many times, when Danny faced danger, he had entrusted his daughter and son to Steve's care as his own stand-in father figure if Danny didn't make it. It meant so much to Steve, on a level where words were inadequate, that his partner and friend trusted him so deeply that he wanted Steve to have care of the most precious people in his life, his children. It was even something Danny and Rachel had worked out legally. If anything did happen to Danny, Rachel had agreed that Steve would have access to both Grace and Charlie, in Danny's stead.

Steve got an idea while he and Grace were finishing up a dinner he could even recognize for what it was: spaghetti, although after one bite he could tell that the acidity of the sauce had been reduced greatly, something he was actually grateful for due to his propensity lately toward a hot stomach. Grace had been given a tray too, and had eaten with politeness, until she finally pushed the tray aside, half-eaten, and asked, "This is what Danno has to eat in here?"

It was their first spaghetti, but Steve recognized the question for what it was. "Uh, yup."

"Uncle Steve, we gotta smuggle him in some real food!"

Steve laughed. "This is what Danno misses most about your visit. You always put a smile on his face."

Which gave Steve the idea. He reached for the small camera brought to record video and audio of the meeting the next day. If he had to ask for badges, he would need to justify it, and thought that a video of the meeting was a good idea. "Listen, Gracie, what if we talk, and I record, and we can play this for Danno when he wakes up. It would be special, so he would not feel like he'd missed your visit."

"Okay," enthused Gracie.

"So, what if I, like, interview you, Gracie. There are a lot of things about you and your Dad I still have never gotten to ask either of you."

"So you will be like a reporter!"

Steve nodded. "Something like that! Okay, let's set this up."

H50 H50 H50 H50

Eventually Grace was picked up by the driver sent by her Mom. Steve received a huge hug before Gracie approached Danno. She held one hand in his, and felt his forehead with her other hand. "Get well quick, okay?" She kissed him on the cheek, and hugged him gently. "I love you, Danno." Before she vanished out the door, she carefully finger combed and patted his hair into his trademark comb-back. "There, that's better."

Steve reached for the kleenex almost immediately after the door closed behind her. It was the simplest thing for her to do, but it showed how much she loved her daddy. Danny was very particular about his hair, and no one had ever seen him let it get out of that neatly combed style before he'd whip out his comb and fix it. Even after swimming, or standing in the wind, he'd find a way to keep his hair the way he always wore it, or comb it back before it got too much out of place.

H50 H50 H50 H50

Evening meds had come, and with them sleep for Steve. Danny still slept. But at 2 o'clock in the morning, Dr. Cornett was called because Danny's fever had climbed another two tenth's of a degree, to 101.9. It was not a dangerous fever, but evidence that the antibiotic was not combating his infection. He listened to Danny's lungs again, frowned, and switched the antibiotic to one that would combat the pneumonia Danny was developing. It would be administered continuously via a drip, adding one more to the number of bags feeding fluids into Danny's veins. The amount of oxygen was increased. The incline of his bed was raised slightly. An expectorant was added to his medicines. A nurse checked his temperature every hour. At 4 o'clock, it hit 102 degrees, but after than it went no higher, and by 8 o'clock, had dropped a tenth of a degree. Cornett had returned, and was studying Danny's readouts and helping Danny sit upright in bed while he listened again to his lungs.

Danny was very groggy, but he cooperated with his doc. When asked to cough, he tried his best, and somehow his doc caught a sample of what he coughed up. His lungs ached. He did not notice Cornett handing the sample off to a nurse who promptly rushed it to the lab for analysis and culturing.

Steve woke up to the sound of coughing, and knew immediately upon opening his eyes and seeing the doc with Danny that things had not improved. He kept quiet and watched. Cornett encouraged Danny to cough some more, so Danny did, and it turned into a series of deep coughs, which cleared his lungs somewhat. "Ugh, doc, that hurt, but I can breathe better," rasped Danny. Cornett wrote something on a slip of paper, and another nurse left the room with it as Cornett helped Danny to lie back down.

"You've have the beginnings of pneumonia, but we caught it early," said the doc. "But now we have to make a decision."

"Uh oh," Danny sighed. "Is this one of those right arm, left arm decisions?"

Cornett smiled. "Not that bad. Have a little faith in your physician!" He noticed Steve and nodded to him, before putting his full attention again on Danny. "The best course now would be an oxygen mask, with regular deep breathing and coughing to keep your lungs from going south on us - do you like my medical terms?"

"'South,' huh?" Danny turned his head, to think, and noticed Steve watching him with long intervals between blinks. "Morning, Buddy," he said in a weak voice that made Steve think of sandpaper, the coarse kind.

"Doc, what's the other choice?" asked Steve, to spare Danny the effort.

"The other choice is the nasal cannula, even more deep breathing sessions, and regular coughing."

Danny paled and sighed. "Oh. Claustrophobia-mask, hyperventilation and coughing, or nose thingie, fiery ribs, and coughing. What about a nice hypo to make me sleep, and the mask and coughing?"

"You breathe too shallowly in sleep. But I think this A or B will only be for part of today, since we are catching it early. The only way we can add sleep to the mix is to intubate you, and your condition is not that advanced. Besides, since I don't want you to sneak up on me after you get well and hit me with whatever is handy, I'd prefer to go one of the other two routes."

Danny grinned. "I wouldn't hit you, I would shoot you. But not in the hands. Let's go with the fiery rib one, since I hate hyperventilating and passing out."

"I love thoughtful patients," said Cornett, and laughed softly. "Okay, first deep breathing session after we get this 'nose-thingie' on you."

"We already did one, and there is no 'we' in this equation. I'm the hapless patient being assaulted with medical equipment. Let's get it over with."

Steve asked, "Will this work as well as the mask, Doc? And should we worry that you have given up medical-ese in favor of plain English?"

"Would you rather I said 'genotype showing hetrozygous TUR and 3RC, likely causing increased enhancement to fluoropyrimidine therapy'?"

"Whoa, doc! I am never playing Scrabble with you," said Danny.

"What did that mean?" asked Steve.

"Nothing Danny has to worry about. It was actually a reference to a report I had to do once on a type of leukemia. You don't have that. As for this treatment, well, with diligence on Danny's part, the cannula, deep breathing, and coughing should work well enough. In other words, no, but considering the patient, I don't see multiple panic episodes as helping, and the sedative can only do so much against a phobia. This should do well enough, since he is motivated to be cooperative." Cornett smiled down at Danny once the nasal cannula was in place and the oxygen turned up. "Now," he said, the stethoscope against Danny's back, "give me the deepest breaths you can manage. I'm going to need 8 of them."

"God, help me," rasped Danny, and started to inhale, while his ribs yelled silent obscenities at him.

H50 H50 H50 H50

Steve's meds and breakfast was delivered, and while he ate, Danny rested, eyes closed.

"You are missing something good," Steve said, just to take his partner's mind off his ribs.

"What?"

"Oatmeal with fish in it again, and passion fruit jello."

Danny's eyes opened, and he turned his head far enough that his eyes could do the rest of the work to see Steve. "Passion fruit jello even exists?"

"It does in Hawaii. At least, I think that's what this is. It's pretty good. It's pink." He held up the last spoonful long enough for Danny to see it.

"Jello should be red, or yellow, or green. Is there anything you won't eat?" Danny was going along with the conversation, because he needed to get his mind off his aching everything.

Steve thought about that. "There are a few things I would prefer to not eat, but I guess where I draw the line is cannibalism."

"If we are ever stranded together anywhere, I will take comfort in that."

"I'm glad I made you feel better, buddy."

"No, it is the anti-nausea meds that are making me feel better since you brought up fish in oatmeal, and cannibalism."

Steve smiled, but changed his expression quickly. Danny noticed. "Are you okay?"

Steve nodded. "Yeah. But there is something serious I need to talk with you about." There would not be as much time as he had hoped to tell Danny about the meeting. Danny's treatments and need for rest afterwards meant Steve would have to explain in stages.

Danny grew worried, but nodded for Steve to go ahead. "So let's talk."

Steve told Danny what Kono and Lou had said. He got to the part where Kono had said she had wished it had been Danny who was shot in the plane, not Steve, but was then interrupted by another treatment for Danny. It was noted that his temperature had gone down another tenth of a degree, his coughs were not as difficult, and his lungs seemed clearer afterwards.

As soon as Danny was settled again, and had had a few minutes to just close his eyes and wait for his ribs to back off a bit, he turned to Steve. His voice was weak. He picked up where Steve had left off. "I can't blame Kono or anyone for thinking that, Steve, because I even wished about a hundred times that it was me rather than you that got shot."

Steve ruffled his own hair and scratched against a 3 day's worth of beard stubble. Danny had that too, but on Steve it was much more noticeable because his stubble was a dark brown, almost black. "Well, there's more."

After Steve finished with everything, Danny did exactly what he and Chin had predicted. He offered to resign, or quit. He was also obviously very depressed. Steve rushed in with his refusal to accept either a resignation or a quit, but was cut short by another treatment, a meal, and that both patients were scheduled for baths. Steve was helped to the bathroom, where there was a shower, and an attendant helped him, while Danny was bathed in his bed by another attendant. Steve got a wet shampoo, while Danny was given a dry one, and both were beardless when everything was finished. And Danny's hair was combed neatly back.

"Danny -"

"You can not refuse if I quit."

"Then I quit too, Danny. Because I can't do this without someone who balances me out the way you do. You are the heart of this ohana, and both Chin and me see that!"

Danny shook his head. "Nope. You are the heart. There would be no Five-0 Task Force without you."

Steve was upset, but his focus was on Danny, whose eyes were focused on his toes, or something at the foot of his bed. "Okay, fine, whatever. You can be the liver then. Can't survive without one, buddy. We both know that, don't we? So you are Five-0's liver. The perfect match to keep the Five-0 heart going."

Danny was silent long enough that Steve almost broke it, but then Danny whispered, "They think I am the weakest link. I heard Grover say that a couple times, and thought he was teasing. I did not know he meant it. Or Kono. I heard her say it once, too."

"They are both wrong, Danno. You have a kind of strength few have. You are stronger than they are. Chin thinks so too."

Danny shook his head, and tears started sliding down his cheeks. "At least Chin is still ..." He hesitated, and then said in a tiny, unsteady voice, "I want us all to be ohana again, Steve."

There wasn't much to say to that except, "Me too, Danno."

"But I'm not sure we can be."

"Danno," said Steve, wishing he could give Danno a big hug. "Give the meeting a chance, okay? It starts in twenty minutes. Obviously, this may be difficult, but I have a plan. Have hope, okay?"

Danny nodded after a few moments, still deeply depressed. The tears were still sliding slowly down his cheeks. "Okay, Steve. I will have hope."


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Well, you knew it couldn't happen in one piece, right? I did not see this particular crisis coming, but I knew something was because writers can tell when the story is about to toss a spanner into the works. Danny-whumpers, this is for you! I used as much medicalese as I could!

Readers and reviewers have been beyond kind to me with this story, and I thank you humbly. I think I got most people properly thanked, and any omissions were entirely accidental. I have a system now to keep track, but every now and then someone slips by me, and for that I'm deeply sorry!

Just for those interested, I expanded my bio to give a bit more of my background and interests, so if you want to read that, be my guest.

And I really really really promise to get this scene past the part everyone wants! Part 2 to follow, ASAP!

Oh, and I own nothing to do with Hawaii Five-0 (except a copy of the original vinyl soundtrack album from the first series :-D ) I make no profit, no nuffin but the satisfaction of writing about a show I really love.

Chapter 11

Steve watched Danny and the ceiling and the clock during the eternally long twenty minutes before the meeting with Kono and Lou was to take place. Danny spent the entire time trying to rest, eyes closed, silently battling all his battles. His eyes remained wet.

Steve received one call, from Chin, asking if the others were there yet. "I know I'm a little early."

With a glance toward Danny, he almost whispered into the phone. "I want you to come in last, buddy. Then I want you to look surprised when I ask you to hand me the box of stuff you got yesterday. I can't reach it from the bed. And I'm not supposed to lift anything that heavy yet."

"Understood. When I see them, I'll give you war-hold on, Lou just pulled in, and Kono is right behind him. How's Danny holding up?"

"Uh, so-so, waiting on the doc, too, but that might be a good thing. Let them see what he's going through. Thanks for the heads-up."

Steve knew that Danny had heard everything. He had become more tense, his breathing quicker, but he was still resting as much as he could. It had been a very long and difficult day for him, with no sleep because of the treatments. He was exhausted, and tears were still spilling one or two at a time from his eyes.

"Danno, they are on their way up. Have hope, remember?"

"Okay." He carefully reached for the kleenex box and wiped his eyes and face, but the nasal cannula blocked him from blowing his nose, so he pulled it down to his chin, blew his nose, then settled it back into place, the tape not catching quite right on a patch of tear-dampened skin. He was trying to get it to stick when Kono and Lou knocked, then entered the room. Danny did not look at either of them directly, just nodded vaguely in their direction, even when they said, "Hi, Danny," in unison, voices subdued. "Hey," he replied, still not looking at them other than to register that Lou was wearing a medium blue polo shirt and khaki Bermuda shorts, while Kono wore something dark, floaty and sleeveless over dark skinny jeans. He kept struggling with the tape after they moved over to stand by Steve's bed.

"Hi Boss."

"How's it, Steve?"

"Glad you could both make it," answered Steve, after taking a precautionary spoonful of his antacid. He was nervous about this. The fate of the ohana rested on this, and as shattered as it was, it was not going to be easy to fix. So much depended on what Kono and Lou had personally been thinking about, and there was no way yet to know. Their body language gave nothing to him in the way of clues. He wondered if they had spent any time talking together, and if they had, was that a bad thing or a good thing? He wondered if Chin had spoken with either of them after he left the night before. He trusted Chin, though, and he could not have asked him to not check up on Kono. He had to consider the worst case scenario, which was that neither Kono nor Lou had spent any time thinking at all about how they treated Danny.

"Where's Chin?" asked Kono. "Is he coming? Is he in hot water, too? Uh," she paused, shooting Danny the briefest of glances. "I mean, on a case?"

"I told him when the meeting was," answered Steve, deciding to keep his tone as neutral as possible until he had a sense of which way the meeting would go. "And I told Danny everything."

"Oh." Kono did not glance at Danny again.

"Here," said Chin, coming in the room and going straight to Danny's bedside and giving his hand a squeeze. "Your doc was half a hall behind me." He too took his place at Steve's side, after giving both his cousin and Lou encouraging pats on the back.

Nurse Bridget with the bright blonde hair entered with a large pitcher of ice water, and filled Steve's and Danny's little pitchers. She knew about the meeting, and was especially kind in her manner toward her patients and their visitors. She offered them plastic cups of ice water, which each accepted politely.

Dr. Cornett entered the room with a small push-cart of medications. He saw to Steve first, replacing his saline drip, injecting pain meds, and checking his readings, switching out the heavier dressing on his healing wounds for lighter ones. "Temp is 99, so that infection is just about beaten. Blood pressure and heart rate are slightly elevated from before, but very acceptable. How is your stomach?"

"I'm good, Doc. I took an antacid a few minutes ago."

"That's fine. Here are your other meds." Normally the nurse would do temps, blood pressure, pulse, and meds, but with the room so full, Cornett had wanted to do everything, to better sense the mood of the room, and his primary patient. He sensed a lot of tension, and could tell that Steve was not someone to play poker with. He was unreadable, except that alone told the doc that the undercurrents were already running deep. Danny, on the other hand, was an open book, depressed, weary, and clearly he had been crying and was trying to hide it.

As he then turned to Danny and began to pull the privacy curtain, Steve said mildly, "No, Doc, we're all family." Danny tensed briefly, then seemed to deflate like a balloon. "Danny?" asked Cornett. "Are you okay with the curtain being open?"

He just nodded. He felt like a trapped lab rat. All he wanted to do was run, but that was not even remotely on the table of options.

He too got a full new set of drips, including antibiotics and much needed pain medication. Cornett had noticed the red eyes, the pulled up tape on one side of the cannula. "That conjunctivitis should be responding to the drops in another day or so. Let's get some drops in, since I can see you've missed a bit on those." It was all to save Danny's dignity in front of his colleagues. Steve would know he was covering, as would Chin. He used regular saline eye drops, which he always kept with him, as the air in the hospital was on the dry side, and it was common for patients to have eye discomfort. He kept the name on the bottle covered, since these were not the antibiotic drops used for conjunctivitis. Danny obediently accepted the drops.

"What's co-juncti...whatever?" asked Kono, and she sounded concerned.

"Pink eye, a common eye infection, easy to pick up in a hospital setting."

"Oh. I'm sorry, Danny, hope you feel better."

"I'll be fine," said Danny, flatly. "Thank you," he added.

Cornett put him through the whole process of checking his bruised ribs, now a lighter purple on the right, and yellow-green on the left. "Give me a number on the pain as you are breathing right now."

"Uh." Danny floundered, knowing if he was honest, he would not even need to hear the word 'wuss' spoken out loud. The truth was that he was so grateful for the pain meds, as the discomfort he was in was severe, and he still had a treatment to get through without letting the pain show. "It's less," he finally said.

Cornett thought the best thing he could do for Danny was finish the exam and treatment, because the quicker the meeting started, the quicker it would be over. He helped Danny sit up, listened to his lungs, had Danny cough as hard as he could until he felt less congested, then listened as he breathed as deeply as he could. By the end of it, was trying to hold his ribs and grimacing, unable to hide the pain as sweat beaded his brow, upper lip, and just about anything else that sweat from pain.

"Done. Let me help you lay back. Just let me do the work." Once Cornett had his patient settled, he glanced around the room and caught 4 pairs of eyes watching him and his patient. "Pneumonia treatment," he explained, and turned back to Danny. "Significant progress had been made. It may not feel like it, since each time you cough, the ribs and surgery incision, the bruised muscles and organs feel more sore, but if you can tolerate it for another twelve hours, the corner will definitely have been turned. I can increase the pain medication slightly."

"Okay," Danny whispered. "Thanks doc."

As the doc was wiping the sweat off Danny's face and neck, he asked him about his anxiety level. The desperate look in Danny's eyes told him everything he needed to know, so he reached for the hypodermic of sedative and added half of it to the saline drip. "Steve, I want to be notified when this meeting is over."

"Understood, doc."

H50 H50 H50 H50

"So," said Steve, watching Danny try to compose himself, and giving him as much time as he could. He switched on the recording device and set it down on the bedside table separating his and Danny's beds. "Let's get this started. There have been a few setbacks for Danny, but as you can see, those are being addressed. No more need be said about that since all present know what was said yesterday."

"But," said Kono quickly, "we should know. I'm ... I'm worried about him."

"Really? Yesterday you said - "

"-I know what I said yesterday, Steve, and I've had time to think. I was out of line, and ... and I am worried about Danny."

Steve pursed his lips, and kept his tone so neutral, Danny broke into a bitten off sob. He had already had enough. "Just tell them I quit, and stop this, already."

Kono stood up and looked on the verge of running to Danny's bedside. "No! You can't do that! You can't quit!"

Lou too was on his feet. "No way, man. You gotta hang in there!" His voice was a patent-able mix of stern and concern. Steve was encouraged, but he knew both Lou Grover and Kono Kalakaua could have dual motives for seeming now to care about Danny.

"Take seats, everyone," for Chin had stood when the others did. "I have already told Danny he can't quit."

Kono and Lou were watching Danny now as much as they were watching Steve. So Steve pulled the privacy curtain so that he and Chin could see Danny, but Kono and Lou could not. "Meeting back to order." Then, in a very gentle voice, he said to Danny, "I'm sorry you have to hear all this, but you do not need to talk. Rest those ribs. Okay?" It tore Steve up to see Danny's body shaking from the force of sobs it was taking everything he had to keep silent. He was holding a wad of kleenex to his eyes, his other arm wrapped around his stomach.

Steve changed tactics immediately, to spare Danny. He turned to Lou and Kono and said, in anything but a neutral voice, "So help me God, if you are acting concerned to save your badges, I will personally kick both your asses, if I have to heal another six weeks to do it! Why the change?"

Lou handed Kono the kleenex box on Steve's side of the curtain, and patted her knee while she dabbed at her eyes. He said, glancing at the curtain as if trying to see through it. "Those things I said yesterday ... Steve, there's no way I could ever be your partner. Friend, yes. Colleague, co-worker, any day of the week. But partner?" He shook his head. "No way. Forget the arthritic knees and all that, it's way more than that."

"Go on, Lou." Steve's voice was back to neutral, but his face had lost its anger.

"You said something yesterday I couldn't stop thinking about. About how could we respect you if we had no respect for your decision to keep Danny as your partner. I do respect you, Steve. So I got to thinking about Danny."

Sobs suddenly sounded, and a whimper, "Stop! Can't ... can't breathe."

Steve hit the button that would bring the nurse, while Chin, Lou and Kono stood, and there was no faking their worry. Chin literally used the edges of Steve's bed to vault himself over it to be at Danny's side. "He's hyperventilating!". He said it just as the Nurse Bridget ran in. She checked him and hit the button that would bring the doctor, then dug into a drawer and found a bag which she held over Danny's nose and mouth. It inflated and deflated over and over at a rapid rate, until it began to slow, just as Cornett came in. He helped Danny sit up, and listened to his lungs, and pulled the bag aside. "I need you to cough, Danny."

Danny coughed, again and again, each time expelling sputum, seemingly from as deep as his toes. He coughed until he was retching, almost dry heaving. "Inhale, Danny, try to get a breath in." Danny shuddered, but managed to pull in small bits of air, until he had enough to fill his lungs. But immediately he began to cough and retch again. Cornett barked, "Anti-tussive inhaler, Nurse. STAT!" He scribbled something on a paper, which she handed off to another nurse, who took it and literally ran from the room.

Cornett kept his voice firm but soothing. "Your lungs are not going to collapse, Danny. I know it feels like it. Now listen to me. You need to fight the cough now. Fight it as hard as you can." He nodded, but he was crying and holding his screaming ribs. His body was wracked again as another fit shuddered through him, but it was clear that he was trying to fight. "Inhale, Danny, inhale. Every chance you get."

This went on until the second nurse ran back into the room and put what looked like an asthmatic's inhaler in Cornett's hand. He immediately put it to Danny's mouth. "Inhale, now, Danny. Inhale deeply." The doctor timed the pumping of the anti-tussive just as Danny got in a breath. "Another, Danny." He pumped it again. Danny's coughing lessened dramatically and ceased within another minute. "Even breaths, slow and even. Hold Chin's hand, and concentrate on relaxing your chest and abdomen. I'm ordering a warming blanket for your ribs, to help them. Don't try to talk yet."

Danny was drenched in sweat, laying back against the pillow once his breathing was under control. His face was etched by lines of pain and fear, his eyes closed from exhaustion.

Steve, Kono, and Lou had all huddled together as Danny's crisis unfolded, scared half out of their minds. "What happened?" Steve finally asked. "Is Danno okay?"

Dr. Cornette did not answer immediately, as he was listening to his patient's heart, and reaching around him to listen again to his breathing, not letting Danny sit up for it. "...He's okay. In layman's terms, his cough center got stuck in the 'on' position. The inhaler was used to get it to shut off again." He looped his stethoscope around his neck and took a very deep, silent breath of his own. "He needs a new gown, a sponge bath, which -"

"Doctor, he has popped some of the stitches on his incision." As the nurse had removed Danny's gown, she noticed the bandage was showing seepage of blood.

Cornett sighed silently, and looked at the damage. It was considerable. Several layers of stitches had ripped away from the force of the coughing. The doc patted and smoothed Danny's hair, and whispered to him, "A minor set back. You just rest." He reached for a hypo and injected it right into the port on the back of his right hand, then counted to ten with his fingers, including all in the room in on the silent count. On ten, he let out an audible sigh, and fitted an oxygen mask over the now unconscious Danny's face. To Nurse Bridget, he said, "Get a team in here with a gurney. I'm taking no chances, I want..." and he rattled off a variety of scans and other things in multi-syllabic medicalese. "This poor guy can't catch a break."

Kono began to cry. "Will he be okay?"

Cornett nodded, and made way for the team who transferred Danny so gently to the gurney, it made Kono cry even harder. "I just want to make sure his kidney and liver are fine. He sure is messing up my neat stitches, though." Cornett smiled. "Oddly enough, that coughing fit cleared his lungs out very well. Now we can chance the rest we couldn't before. Give us a few hours to run those tests, and he'll be back here. This may take awhile, so you can finish your meeting."

Chin, Lou, Kono, and Steve shook Cornett's hand. "Take good care him," said Steve, his voice cracking from the strain of the fear he'd felt.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12 (Some heavy swearing, please be warned, and forgive me.)**

 **A/N** : I am so grateful for the feedback, the reviews on this story! I have not replied yet because I had to write this. I feel the sense of urgency now to get the meeting finished, because it has been building to this for so long, and it still doesn't quite happen yet. Next part, it is gonna happen. No more build-up. If any of you have opinions on whether Lou or Kono should go first, let me know, because each is ready to talk.

I do apologize for the strong language in one part of this chapter. I also apologize for the dense paragraphs of basically Steve talking….that is how the story wanted it to be. I know how to split dialogue, but it didn't want me to do that, so I didn't. My bad if it throws anyone off or makes it too hard to read.

For those curious, I do not have a medical background (except for stuff I've personally gone through), but I do have family members in the medical profession, and I am an avid researcher. In my opinion, half the fun of writing is researching.

I will say thanks to all reviews to part 1 after I post this, and cross fingers this is readable, and then dive into part 3! To all readers and reviewers, mahalo! I read every review, and some guests I'd love to respond to, but can't due to how this whole system works. Just know, I appreciate you as much as the members who leave reviews, and all readers!

CBS owns Hawaii Five-0. I mean no infringement whatsoever! Thank you for letting me and others play with your creations!

 **Chapter 12 (Swearing ahead, be warned!)**

Steve shoved the heels of his hands against his eyes and willed himself to calm down. Danno had just scared him half to death with that awful coughing fit, not being able to breathe, the fear in his eyes, the pain he had seen. He had watched his partner's face turn more and more red, the veins standing out on his neck and temples as he coughed. He had thought Danny would have a stroke, or a heart attack. And then he was breathing again, finally, and the red receded until his skin was sweat soaked, a shade much too pale to be healthy.

He was so glad the doc had knocked Danny out. He just hoped that coughing attack had not jarred more stitches, or anything they couldn't see. He was worried about his liver, his kidney, his ribs, his lungs. His entire midsection had taken a beating with that cough. At first it had shocked Steve that Danny had damaged his stitches so badly, but considering the severity of the cough, he realized it should not have shocked him at all.

Steve began to rub his temples, keeping his eyes open because closing them brought into sharp focus again Danny's coughing fit. Steve McGarrett had been in many adrenal situations, but this one shook him in a way few others had in a long, long time. Danny was his partner, and he had felt like he was going to see him suddenly die right before his eyes.

He knew the whole episode was his fault. He had pushed Danny too far, once again expecting him to handle more than he was physically and emotionally capable of in his weakened state. He hated himself for putting Danny through the meeting. He should have known it was too much. It would have been a lot to handle when he was healthy and fine. Injured, sick, and weak, how had he honestly expected his partner to weather something so personally emotional? He should have protected him instead of throwing him into such deep water. He hadn't had Danny's back, not the way Danny had tried to have his by trying to weather the meeting.

He felt a comforting touch on his shoulder. He lowered his hands just enough to see that it was Chin. Of course it was Chin. Lou was helping Kono, his arm around her so she could literally cry on his shoulder. Steve realized he had hardly ever seen her cry. It hurt him to see it.

He nodded at Chin, because he didn't know what else to do, and lay back in the bed. Chin pulled his chair closer, and handed Steve a cup of ice water. "I know what you are thinking, and this wasn't your fault."

Steve took a few cold sips, which did nothing to ease the tightness in his throat. He looked at his team, and they looked at him, and his words came tumbling out, like a landslide down a steep hill. Sometimes during the landslide, a wet tear would slowly slide down one or the other cheek, but he wasn't even aware of them.

"Yes, it was, Chin. It was. He had such a hard day. -Those treatments, no rest. Physically, he was hurting. We've all busted ribs; we know what it's like. When I told him what this meeting was about, it tore him apart. I should have been more gentle, held some comments back. We all know he takes things hard. He's sensitive, and I took none of that into consideration when I recounted what Kono and Lou said about him. He emotionally withdrew. He withdrew, and tried his best to hang on and prepare. He didn't ask to be excused, because he knew I wouldn't have listened if he had. He knows I ignore his needs, especially when he's being emotional. I keep showing him how I have been raised to deal, or not deal, with emotions, never allowing for Danny's different upbringing. Again and again I show him that he gets listened to when he swallows his pain and doubts and does everything my way. 'Suck it up, Danny. At least two of your co-workers now think you are a spineless wuss and wish I'd kick you off the Task Force and out of our ohana.' Isn't that pretty much what I told him? Knowing Danny would be hurt, did I even hesitate to tell him? No. Then, despite how badly his feelings are hurting, when he offers to resign, I tell him he can't do that. He says he'll quit. I say you can't quit, I won't let you. Never mind your pain, Danno, never mind the hurt, you can't do what I don't want you to do, because what? I might need him to donate a kidney to me someday? Some partner I am. Why do I always ignore him unless he does things the way I want?"

Steve paused, but kept the floor, since it was obvious he had more to say. "I was raised differently, to suck it up, so I expect especially Danno to do that. But the fact that he is Danno is precisely the reason I chose him for my partner! I knew he'd challenge me, and when I'm honest with myself, I agree with him that I could use a little bit of his sensitivity and expressiveness. I'm too closed off. I take risks. It's a McGarrett thing, and a SEAL thing. But Danno isn't a SEAL, or a McGarrett! When push comes to shove, I demand he make all the changes. He holds his ground, but I know in the end that he'll just suck it up and have my back, no matter how he feels. Torn ACL, busted ribs, concussion, bullet wounds, bone marrow donation, Sarin poisoning, blown up and buried under concrete in a space that even made me feel claustrophobic, rebar jammed in his side, and I yank it out and pour hydrogen peroxide on it, and it hurt so bad, but he did not scream. So I make a bandage out of stuff, and duct tape it on, knowing it will tear like crazy when pulled off, and I just expect him to be fine afterwards, even though I know he's not fine, and get on his case when he reminds me he's not exactly anywhere near one hundred percent. Every time, I ignore him. Every time he tries to ask me to understand, I ignore him. Or I tease him. I know it hurts him. We all know. He TELLS us, hoping against hope that this time we will listen to him. But we never do! He keeps trying, and we keep teasing or ignoring him, pushing him away AGAIN, when what he's doing is begging us to please give a shit for what he's going through ... And we never do."

Steve realized why Chin had stuffed kleenex in his hands, and finally wiped his eyes, blew his nose, and the landslide continued. "I have to keep him from quitting. He means it this time, I can tell. Or at least he wants to mean it. He has every reason now to mean it. He has for six years. Now he knows half his ohana has walked away from him, and after what Rachel did to him with the custody battles, and lying to him about Charlie not being his kid when he was, and his brother Matty turning crook and expecting his big brother to look the other way, and when Marco Reyes kills Matty, and Danno killed Reyes, then almost gets killed because of ... because of all that shit in Columbia with the CIA crook who Reyes was working for - he must feel like he has no one who won't hurt him. Except his kids. And I go and tease him that Charlie will come to hate him. I know I've hit bone, but I also know Danno will forgive me and let it slide, even if it tears him up like a machine gun inside."

Steve wiped his eyes again, but it was clear he wasn't finished, even if he was talking about things that were unknown to some of his task force. "No wonder Gracie and Charlie are his everything! They are the only ones who don't hurt him! We keep hurting him! I keep hurting him! I call him ohana and brother and hug him and would die for him, but I won't give a shit about his feelings. Two of his work ohana don't care if he dies, think he's a coward, think he's too disloyal to shoot the guy who shot me, when he went through hell after what he did for Matty. If I were him, I would quit. If I were him, I'd just say, 'Fuck all of you,' and walk away. So what does he do? What does he do? He donates half his liver to me, and then nobody visits him but his kids, and I get all the Get Well stuff, and all I did was get shot. I didn't do anything heroic. He did, and we abandoned him, everyone abandoned him, and I would seriously say 'Fuck it,' and never speak to any of us again. But he won't do that. Danny never does that. He may decide this time to not say anything, to just quietly walk away. He donates his liver, and then hears that he's being ignored because he might ever say he saved my life, which he has every right to say. And you two prepare a chorus of variations on 'yada yada yada' until he shuts up, IF he says it. He hasn't even said it, and he gets no visitors from his 'ohana' because he might say it, he might ask us to care that he was scared to land that plane, that I might die, that he might crash instead of land the plane, that all he cared about was giving me the best chance to live. Nobody thought about him! He was thinking about me, you guys were only thinking about me. Believe me, he gets it now. He knows he means nothing. He finally got it that not even his co-workers give a fucking shit about him. The only thing that matters to his ohana, even to the Governor and the people of this state, is that Steve McGarrett didn't die, not that Danny Williams landed a dead plane on the beach where EMTs were waiting, and helped save my life by splitting his liver with me. Nobody thought of him. Nobody. But his kids. He gets it now. And he knows his partner tossed pineapple at him, and he slipped and fell on it and got hurt, and he's had one setback after another because of that, and that he was hurt before he ever even donated half his liver to me."

That's when Steve lost it, his face crumpled into an expression of pure grief. Tears flowed freely. His voice came out so strained, so hurt and caring, so sad. "And he forgave me! I told him Charlie would come to hate him, and tossed pineapple at him, and he had to have surgery again after the fall when he slipped, and he forgave me! He always does that. He forgave Rachel so many times, and now he's trying to figure out how to forgive you guys, after he forgave me." He covered his face again, but the tears had stopped. He whispered, "I told him to have hope, but what hope is there when we show him every day that we only care about him when he shuts up and has my back? What kind of ohana are we to Danno? With friends like us, family like us, who needs enemies?"

Steve looked up at Kono, Lou, and Chin, and over at Danny's empty bed. The landslide had ended, but a last tear slipped down Steve's cheek. "I don't want to lose him. But we may already have."


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

 **A/N** : Okay, here it is. The story isn't over yet, but here's The Meeting, and I hope it satisfies most readers.

Your reviews and reads and favorites and follows mean so much to me—really, truly, I love hearing from you. I tried to get this out as quickly as I could, but I took an unexpectedly long nap and delayed this by 5 hours. Sorry! You writers know how exhausting it is to write. It's exhilarating too, but oh it is tiring, in the best way. I can promise more stories, after this one wraps, which may take a few more chapters.

To the reader who gave up on the story because I took 1 chapter too long to get to the Meeting, I'm sorry. Maybe you'll read this anyway. I hope so. To all who have stuck with this to this point, thank you. There will be more.

I own nothing to do with the show, and am not infringing on any copyright. I'm just playing with your toys.

 **Chapter 13**

"Steve?" It was Kono's voice. She sounded very sad.

Steve looked at her with eyes full of exhausted anguish. He could feel Chin's hand on his left shoulder. Lou was sitting down again, near the foot of Steve's bed. His expression seemed far away. Steve moved his eyes back to Kono. "Yeah?"

She was obviously under a lot of strain, but there was a hesitant determination in her eyes. "Steve, if we have lost Danny, maybe we can get him back. Maybe it isn't too late. You said yourself that he is looking for a way to forgive us."

Before Danny's coughing fit, he would probably have kept his voice cold. But now Steve was too tired, too weary, too aware of his own role in setting a poor example of acceptance of his partner's different way of relating to people. He was ready to grasp at ideas. "I won't have him manipulated. If your idea doesn't come from an honest place, I don't want to hear it."

Kono's voice was tired, and full of regret. "But it does come from an honest place. I have done a lot of thinking since yesterday. And what you just said hit home and moved me deeply." She was looking at the blanket near Steve's feet, until she raised her eyes. They were reddened from her earlier cry, and still threatening to spill more tears. "I was so wrong about Danny."

Kono's own landslide was on the verge of happening, so Steve didn't interrupt.

"I said such terrible things yesterday, Boss -things I am so ashamed of, that I wish I could take back." She sniffled and Chin handed her a kleenex. "I would give anything for Danny to not know any of it, for all of us to know none of it."

"Do you blame me for telling him?" asked Steve, his voice regaining the faintest sharpness, although there was little energy or anger in it.

"No." Kono's answer was quiet. "It's not your fault. I meant what I said when I said it. That's one of the tragedies in this. But I had allowed myself to look at things all mixed up. I ended up literally making a lot of mountains out of a lot of mole-hills, and now it's the mountains we have to fix."

"Explain, Cousin," asked Chin. His voice held no judgment, no accusation. "What do you mean by mixed up?"

Kono sat down in the chair next to Lou, by the wall beyond the foot of Steve's bed. Her eyes stayed on Steve's, with an occasional glance at her cousin or Lou. "I guess it's partly the way I was raised," she began.

Steve's green touched blue eyes watched Kono's deep brown gaze grow inward. "I was raised to think that keeping my emotions on the inside was a show of inner strength. When I was surfing professionally, especially as I started to win titles, it did make me strong, because it can be a cut-throat sport. Someone always wants to steal your wave, knock you off your board, mess with your confidence. You let anyone see a weakness, they exploit that.

"So I never let on if my ankle was sore, my knee, my back, or if I was having a down day. The only people who ever knew were those I could really trust. It wasn't very many people. So I would talk to the water. And the strange thing is that the water answered back. Water is very honest, and once you start to listen to it, it's very emotional. All surfers, swimmers, boaters, fishermen and women learn to listen to the water, to hear, to feel what it is saying. But I kept my other emotions to myself, and learned to be tough. People learned not to mess with me."

Steve kept listening, wondering what this had to do with Danny.

"It was lonely, except that the water, the waves, never lied to me," continued Kono. "When I was on the water, I was home. I could be myself. I learned to read it, and in return it never lied to me. So it was fitting that I met you and Danny at the beach, with Chin to introduce us. I was very relaxed, very open. And I liked both of you right away."

Kono smiled at the memory. "If Chin hadn't been there, I think Danny would have asked me out."

Steve and Chin both grinned. "Probably," agreed Steve.

"Would you have gone out with him?" asked Chin.

Kono laughed. "No way, Cuz! He was wearing a tie! Haole all the way! But I did like him."

The laugh left her voice, but the memories were still the focus of her gaze as she continued. "You were both Ohana in no time. Then, I guess I picked up some wrong ideas. It took a couple years, maybe more. -I did take cues from you, Steve, from how you handled Danny. You and I were a lot alike. You and then Lou. Danny just has this very emotional, very vocal personality, and I wasn't used to that. It did kindof put me off, but he was nice, and exasperatingly funny. Material to tease him with was so easy to find, it was like shooting fish in a barrel!"

Steve just kept listening as Kono began to count 'fish' on her fingers. "He didn't like Hawaii, didn't like the water, the whole 'pineapple does not belong on a pizza' thing, and thought macadamia nuts looked like garbanzo beans-what even is a garbanzo bean? He didn't like so much that I've loved all my life. He wore a tie to work for a whole year!"

And then Steve watched her grin fade. "I thought it was funny at first. But then it started slowly to annoy me. And since it seemed to annoy everyone else, too, I didn't think about whether I was reading Danny right. I stopped reading him, and let the petty little annoyances grow into big ones, until I started to push him away, to dislike him. Once it reached that stage, every little irritation just made me dislike him more, and none of his good qualities made it past the shadows of the mountains I'd built up in my mind."

Steve frowned slightly. It seemed to take a lot of energy. "So far I'm not hearing anything that is going to get Danny back."

"Patience," said Chin.

"I'm getting there," assured Kono. "You see, yesterday I called, um, Rachel."

H50 H50 H50 H50

There was this loud chorus from three male voices. "You did WHAT?" Steve sat forward too fast, and his stitches ached, his own healing midsection told him to take it easy. Chin, equally incredulous, eased him back onto the pillow, and pushed the bed controls so he was sitting up a little higher. Even Lou had stopped looking so pensive and was sharply focused on Kono now.

Steve asked Kono why she had called Danny's ex-wife, of all people. He could not fathom why she had done that, or how this would have any bearing on getting Danny back.

Kono blushed, and hid behind her long brown hair. "It was because of one thing I said yesterday."

Steve just looked at her as if she had lost her mind. "I don't remember you bringing up Rachel."

Kono flipped her hair back from her face. "That's a mercy. But seriously. Just listen, okay? I said Danny's ex-wife was a bitch, but I still understood why she had divorced him. Which was a cruel thing to say. And then I said a whole lot of stuff I wish I could take back, because you rightfully chewed me out, and told me to think about what I had said. I wanted to be alone to think, so I went to the one place I knew for sure I could be alone, Boss. I went to your house, into the back yard, and down to the water, and did a lot of thinking. -I hope you don't mind, Boss."

Steve was surprised, but not upset about it. He had inherited the beach house from his father, and the place had become a bit of an unofficial meeting place, a relax-and-unwind haven outside of work. Danny, Chin, Lou and Kono all had keys. "No, I don't mind."

"I was there a long time, and I kept thinking about what I'd said about understanding why Rachel divorced Danny. Except, by then I'd come to see Danny for more of what he actually is, not the annoying mountains. I realized each was a grain of sand I'd been looking at under the magnifying glass. I'd gone back to the early days, when I'd admired how he took care of Grace, and his loyalty to Steve, to us, his ohana, and remembered his struggles to survive Hawaii no matter what it threw at him, because he would do anything, endure anything to be in his daughter's life. Would I do as well in New Jersey as he has done in Hawaii?" She shook her head. "I don't think so. I'd just be angry. I'd be a misplaced girl from Hawaii, angry because I'd been forced out of my element."

Kono paused, and shook her head, as if she didn't understand something. "The way I was seeing Danny, I really didn't understand why Rachel divorced him. He always told us it was because she couldn't stand the stress of his job. I get that, in theory anyway, because we see it happen time and again. It doesn't usually take long if it's going to happen."

Lou chimed in, his voice quiet. "Maybe the relationship lasts a couple years, but then, another heartbroken police officer."

Kono nodded. "Exactly. But Danny and Rachel lasted longer. They had Grace, and seemed according to both of them to be happy, until Rachel files for divorce and the rest is more or less known. -Or, is it?"

Steve felt uncomfortable, because this seemed like prying into Danny's very personal business. Not that he wouldn't have pried, had he reason to. It was one of the things he now realized he would need to work on, learning when to give Danny space, and when to barge in because that is what his partner really wanted him to do.

But he kept his mind on Kono when she spoke again. "Anyway, I thought the best way to get a read on why they parted, and what Rachel was really like, and Danny, was to talk with her. In all these years, I had never really had a 'girl talk' with her. I was pretty sure she wouldn't want to talk to me, but to my surprise, after she got over her instant worry about Danny, we had a long talk."

"Maybe we shouldn't let Danny know this part," suggested Lou.

"Where were Gracie and Charlie, or Stan?" asked Steve.

"That's the odd part," answered Kono. "She and Stan had been supposed to go to some dinner, with Charlie having a baby sitter. But then Stan got called to a business meeting at the last minute, and Grace was here, visiting Danny. So Rachel and I went to get burgers and then girl-talked for nearly three hours."

Steve -and, he suspected, Chin and Lou- would have loved to be a fly on the wall during their conversation, especially seeing the effect it had had on Kono. But he also wanted Danny's privacy respected. Mistakes he had made in the past were not going to be made again.

Kono showed that she was on a wavelength with Steve. "Obviously, there were areas I could not go into, and some of what Rachel volunteered is private, confidential, so I won't talk about that. But I did learn a lot I can share. She told me she didn't divorce Danny because he was a bad husband or that she stopped loving him. In fact, she still loves him. She has even come to deeply regret the divorce, because finally she is understanding why it's so important that Danny is a cop. And she is angry he has been so ignored while Hawaii is still on this 'McGarrett' thing. -It isn't that she doesn't like you, Steve, or doesn't appreciate what you have done. But she knows you weren't working alone when you did the stuff people are talking about. You had a partner, and a Task Force. -And before you ask why she didn't send a card or flowers, she wanted to, but Stan wouldn't let her. He won't let her visit. But what she can do, and what she has done, is allow Grace and Charlie to visit."

Steve was not a fan of Rachel's second husband. "It doesn't sound like they are doing well. Does he know you and Rachel talked?"

Kono shrugged. "I don't know. Probably not. I doubt she would tell him."

Steve cleared his throat, and took a couple more sips of water. "So how do you feel about Danny now?"

Kono hung her head, and her shoulders slumped for a few seconds, before she looked at Steve. "I know I wronged him. -He's my brother, and I need to talk with him, to ask him to forgive me, if he can forgive me. I need to show him from now on that I've got his back, and always will, even if he can't forgive me."

Now Steve was finally daring to hope. "I think they want me to start on physical therapy in a couple days, so you'd have a chance to talk with Danny alone."

Kono smiled. "I'd like that. If he would let me. It should be his decision."

"I will ask him, Kono. He and I have to talk, too. I hi-jacked him to be my partner six years ago. I think it's high time I asked him if he would take that job, instead of telling him he had it, whether he liked it or not." He felt the approval in Chin's squeeze on his shoulder.

"Boss?" Kono was fingering her badge.

"Keep it, Kono," said Steve.

But as relieved as she looked, she stared down at it. "That means a lot to me. But would you mind if I let Danny decide whether or not I get to keep it?"

Steve broke out into a bright smile, and opened his arms to Kono, inviting her in for a hug. "Yeah, yeah, that would be fine." Kono hugged Steve back, and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

H50 H50 H50 H50

Lou Grover cleared his throat, and stood up. "I guess it's my turn, now." He was fingering his own badge, weighing it and turning it over again and again in his palm. He finally reached over and set it beside Steve on the bed.

Steve stared at it, with Kono and Chin looking on in surprise, all levity having left the room. "Lou?"

"It's not because of Danny," he said. "Well, it is, but not the way you think. And it goes deeper."

"I ... I don't understand." Steve said it out loud, still refusing to take Lou's badge, while he could feel Chin and Kono thinking it.

"I too did a lot of thinking yesterday. Had a long talk with my wife. Renee has always been my sounding board, my life's partner." He stared at his badge, but shoved his hands deep in his pockets. "You see, this has been a tough year. I lost it when my daughter was kidnapped, and didn't trust my colleagues to help me, and that showed me that my judgment was fraying. Danny helped me deal with the emotions a lot, once you guys barged in and helped me whether I liked it or not. He was a true friend, as were all of you. And then, when my family had to go on the run, I again didn't trust you to help us. You had to figure everything out on your own, and helped me anyway. I had yet another lapse in judgment."

He paused, and paced, before standing still. "And then, with this whole thing about the plane getting shot up. When Kono told us the ATC had called, and you were bad hurt, Steve, all I could think of was that Danny would get you killed, because he was gonna have to land that plane, and he was gonna crash it. I had no confidence in him. When I asked who was flying the plane, I felt like we were gonna have to bury you, and it would be Danny's fault. Forget the circumstances. Hell, I didn't even think about them. I just felt like it was over. Five-0 would not be able to fix this one. We listened to ATC after that, on the emergency channel, while Danny was told to prepare for a water landing. And I thought, he's gonna go for that, so he'll live. And when he said, nope, he was landing on the beach, clear the beach, have the EMTs standing by, because you'd drown if he landed it in the water..."

Lou paced again. His face, though, was peaceful. "Well, then I knew it was over, because he'd crash, and everyone would die, and how many people would he take out when he did that, because he can't land a plane on a beach, he just doesn't want to land in the water because he hates the water. My head was so screwed up. I had no confidence in Danny at all. I had no confidence in anyone. I wasn't thinking straight."

"Lou -" began Steve.

But Lou Grover cut him off by holding up his hand, peacefully. "Yeah, I was wrong. Again. Danny landed the plane just right, and nobody got hurt, and he helped get you out, which I ignored. And I was jealous because he, as your partner, got to ride with you in the bus. He would see your last breath. It should be me with you, because I was totally unappreciative of the close bond between you and Danny. And then, when he gave you his liver, didn't bat a lash, just you needed it, he gave it, I was jealous. But I could not ignore that he cared that much. It rattled me. It bugged me, that you would be a little bit Danny if you survived. -And you did survive. You wouldn't be just Steve anymore. You'd always have this piece of Danny, and he'd saved your life. He'd done something none of us could do. We were all willing, but the only one who could save you was Danny."

Lou sighed, and kept his hands in his pockets. "I thought about that for three days before I started to realized I had lost my judgment. I had to see Danny as the good man he was, good detective, good friend, good caring human being, good partner, good father. I did not like having to admit this. I wanted to be your partner, Steve, but even that showed poor judgment on my part."

He locked eyes on Steve's, and stated matter-of-fact. "You picked the best man for that job, McGarrett. It was your call, and you picked the best man. Once my brain got on that track, I realized just how good Danny is. And how screwed up my head was. And I finally had to realize, maybe it was time for me to hang it up."

"Lou -!" Three voices protested.

"Let me finish, please." He sounded peaceful, content. "I been at this job a long time, a long long time, and we all seen it happen before. When the judgment goes, it's time to hand in the badge and hang up the uniform. I talked it over with Renee, and we both decided it was time."

Steve stared down at the badge, then back up at Lou. "What will you do?"

Lou Grover smiled. "I'm starting a consulting firm! And I sure hope I can find office space close to Five-0 offices, because maybe I could still help my friends out. This isn't the end of a friendship, or ohana, but a growing. I feel good about my decision, and think it's the best one for Five-0 too. We'll all still see each other a lot. And as soon as I can, I'm ordering a real New Jersey pizza pie flown in for Danny, if it costs me my vacation money to do it. He's earned it."

Steve nodded, a little sad, but happy too. The happiness of his family was what mattered to him the most. "You're sure?" he asked, and when Lou smiled and nodded, he picked up the badge, and handed it to Chin. "Okay. But Five-0 will be your biggest customer."

"That won't break my heart," laughed Lou, and as bittersweet as the moment was, it was still a good one, and Steve felt his ohana knitting back together, with Danny still the heart, even if Danny didn't know it yet.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

 **A/N** : This chapter is basically a bridge to what follows, which will be of a more satisfying length.

You have been so kind and honest in your reviews, I cannot adequately thank you enough! Giving you another chapter was the best thanks I could give, and the promise of more to come. I appreciate your words, your effort, your follows, and am unable to express how humble I feel at all favorites to this story. Thank you so very very much.

I own nothing to do with H50. I can't help it if my imagination likes to play with CBS's toy.

 **Chapter 14**

Steve felt immense relief. He still had Five-0, although part of him was nervous that he had a long talk coming with Danny, when his partner was up to it. He had a feeling he would have to wait a day or maybe more before he'd have a chance. So much depended upon how Danny was doing after that awful coughing fit. He looked up at the clock in the room. "How long has it been since they took Danny for those scans and stuff?"

"One hour, seventeen minutes," replied Lou. "It's gonna be awhile before we hear anything." He sighed, and Chin puffed out his cheeks.

"Is it okay if I stay until we hear how he is? I've got some visiting to make up for," she asked, fluffing out one side of her hair without realizing she was doing it. "I hope he's okay."

"Me, too," chorused Steve, Chin and Lou. Lou tapped his watch. "Probably be another couple hours at least."

"Poor Danny," whispered Kono, flopping into a chair, but she was now tense and weary all at once. "I had no idea things had gotten that bad for him. Did you really throw pineapple at him, Boss?"

Steve closed his eyes, and his mind played Danny's fall in slow motion. He opened them again right away. "Yeah, I did. Not one of my best ideas. If I hadn't done that, he wouldn't be having such a hard time right now."

Chin squeezed his shoulder again, and Kono rubbed his ankle through the blanket. "The past is behind the sunset. We can only look forward to the sunrise," the cousins said in unison, then smiled sadly. Chin added, "Old Hawaiian saying."

Quiet settled on the room, and Steve was fighting off a nap when Nurse Bridget came in carrying Steve's meal tray and little cup of pills. "It's that time again," she said brightly. "Liver and onions."

Steve looked shocked, and Lou's eyes went wide. "Seriously?" He looked a little pale. "Liver?"

Steve was trying to get as far away from that tray as possible. "I'm not -"

"Please take your medications."

He did so, finishing off his cup of ice water to wash them down. Chin reached over and refilled it.

"I'm not eating liver. Or onions. I just had a liver transplant!"

"Now, Steve," began the nurse. "You need to keep your strength up. Liver is very healthy."

"But it's liver."

"It's healthy."

"I would rather eat a raw rat."

Lou's eyes grew wider, and he clamped a hand over his mouth and ran for the bathroom while everyone except Nurse Bridget tinged green. "Oh. Well. Okay." She took the tray away after saying she would have the kitchen send up something else.

After she had gone, Chin said, "I was hungry. I'm not now."

"I may never eat again. Or at least not today," said Kono.

"If Danny had even smelled that," said Steve. He very deliberately moved his little water pitcher over to the far side of his bed table, while Chin burst out laughing and Kono looked confused.

H50 H50 H50 H50

Things settled down after that, and half an hour later the nurse returned with chicken soup, a fruit cup, and four brownies she had taken from the tray at the nurse's station. One was for Steve, and the others were for his friends. Water and ice pitchers were refilled, and she had brought everyone hot tea. There was no news yet on Danny.

Two hours later, Steve woke from a nap as Dr. Simmons came in on his rounds. This time there was news about Danny. He was going back into surgery. One of the scans had shown one of his broken ribs had displaced from the coughing, and had abraded the low tip of his right lung. Given everything that had happened, Danny would be in ICU for at least a day or two, so they could get everything under control and give his body time to really begin healing.

There was quiet for awhile after Dr. Simmons had finished his check on Steve and left to finish his rounds. Talk was sporadic, and worried.

Almost four hours later, Dr. Cornett knocked lightly and came in. He met and shook hands with Kono and Lou, then turned most of his attention to Steve and Chin. "Danny is out of recovery and settled into ICU." He explained that Danny's fractured rib had scraped against his right lung badly enough to cause some abrasion and bleeding to occur. His kidney stitches showed stress, and had been reinforced; one small section of his liver was showing duress from the coughing and bruising. Therefore, Danny would be kept under the strictest monitoring, while everything had a chance to heal. To keep him from needing to cough, any fluid or mucus in his lungs, bronchial tubes or trachea would be carefully suctioned out by a machine. Danny would remain unconscious until the pneumonia had been defeated by antibiotics, suctioning of mucus, and rest.

"Can he have visitors?" asked Steve, feeling deflated by the news. "We all want to see him."

"Not tonight," replied Danny's doctor, knowing this was not the news they wanted to hear. "Probably not for 24 hours. But after that, we will know a lot better how he is responding. Then, it should be okay, one at a time."

Steve leaned forward. "His daughter comes tomorrow night. He will want to see her."

Cornett nodded. "Grace." He hesitated. "Danny will not be conscious yet. If we need to suction, she would have to leave for that. -It's a scary looking procedure, but after it is over, she could sit with him for possibly a half hour, provided the machines do not upset her, because if she is upset, Danny will know it. That's the best I can do for now. I'm sorry."

Kono spoke up hesitantly. "Maybe, maybe we could all just see him? Even for just a couple minutes?"

Dr. Cornett looked compassionately at four hopeful pairs of eyes, all staring unblinking into his, willing him to say yes. He gave in, but warned them it would be brief. "He is pretty deeply under, but I believe he will know you are there. It will help him."

"Thanks, Doc!" Kono even gave him a hug, and a kiss on the cheek. Cornett smiled warmly.

Steve had to make the journey in a wheelchair, pushed by Chin, while the doctor led them down the elevator one floor and into ICU. Danny's bed was in the first bay, surrounded by numerous machines taking vital readings constantly. His face was hidden behind a large oxygen mask fixed tightly enough to be essentially air tight. His nose was gently clamped closed while inside the mask a tube was held in place between his lips. The mask had a bulb attached to the side of it, with a long tube running to one of the machines. Every third breath, the bulb compressed with an mechanical deflating sound, steadily forcily oxygen enriched air deep into Danny's lungs and fogging the mask almost opaque. It would hold for three seconds, after which it hissed full again to await the mechanical count that would deflate it again. Danny's chest was uncovered, showing his alarming bruising, and the new sutures closing for the third time his angry-looking surgery wound. It barely rose when he breathed on his own, but on the machine assisted breaths, his chest rose almost too much. There were ports in each hand, his left upper chest, and to each was attached more than one drip. While they watched, a nurse bandaged his surgery wound, and then another nurse brought in a small warming blanket to lay gently across his ribs. The rest of him was covered neatly by a sheet and blanket.

The group was shocked. Even prepared, they were not ready to see their friend so vulnerable, so damaged.

"He's in pain," whispered Steve. He just knew. They all did.

"That is why he is being kept unconscious," said Cornett. "Okay. One at a time. One minute. If you hear any beep, clear the doorway STAT."

"Is he that bad?" asked Lou, brows engaged in worried battle.

"He isn't stable yet."

"Man. Danny, I'm so sorry." Clearly, Lou was affected. "What are his chances?"

Dr. Cornett's expression was grim, but his voice was strong and sure. "His chances are excellent."

Chin went in first. He stroked Danny's forehead, and held his hand, careful of the port and drip lines. Danny's heartbeat strengthened visibly. Kono went next, kissing his hand, stroking his hair, whispering, "We need you back, brah." Danny's heartbeat skipped once and then settled, weakening a tiny bit. Cornett was watching like a hawk, and made mental notes to ask Steve about this later. But when Lou went in, and Danny's heart rate fell a little more, he shortened the man's visit, and sent in Steve, still in his wheelchair. Steve just stroked Danny's arm as he held his hand, and said nothing but, "Love you, brother." Danny's hear rate picked up strength, and held on.

Cornett let Steve stay for two minutes. Then he shoo-ed them out with a gentle smile. "I'll let you know in the morning how he's doing. If anything changes before then, I will let you know."

Steve nodded, and they all returned to the room that seemed empty without Danny in a bed freshly made to receive him when he could return to it.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

 **A/N** : Wow, even for a shortie like 14 you gave me really kind reviews! I am so appreciative! This one is nice and long, with lots of varied content. The story is moving forward! I hope you all enjoy it.

I literally went right from 14 into this and have been writing and tweaking and finessing 15 since 14 went up. I owe you reviewers many many thanks!

The story that will follow this is already in research. It will pick up pretty much where this one leaves off, and this one isn't done yet!

I own nothing to do with H50. I just play with CBS's toys.

 **Chapter 15**

Steve McGarrett felt keenly the emptiness of the bed next to his in his hospital room at Tripler Army Medical Center. He was resting after having visited Danny, who was now in ICU after a surgery made necessary by the severe coughing fit he had had earlier that afternoon. It was now eleven o'clock, the sky fully dark and starlit. Steve could see the gibbous moon about to set below his windowsill. He wished Danny could see it.

Lou Grover had left for the night, with the promise to return in the morning. Kono had been talked into leaving as well. She was exhausted, and wanted to be well-rested for a long day of visiting tomorrow. She was determined to be there when Danny could return to his room.

Only Chin Ho Kelly remained with Steve, and he had made a bed of sorts out of chairs, pillows and blankets, and was as asleep as exhaustion and an uncomfortable sleeping place could make him. Steve was grateful to his friends. He believed Kono was full of regret that she had let so much time pass without giving Danny the respect and honor he was due. She realized her mistakes, and was awaiting the chance to ask Danny's forgiveness. She was back on track, and only needed the opportunity to let Danny know it. Her heart was again in the right place. A small doubt in Steve's mind made him hope it lasted, but she had broken Danny's (and Steve's) trust, and it would take awhile to silence the uncertainty. Trust did not return immediately.

That night, when Steve had returned with Chin, Kono and Lou to his room, he had noticed the little recorder on his bedside table. It had been moved by staff, when the room was cleaned and the beds both remade. But whoever had moved it had left it running, so it was still showing the tiny green light for audio and visual recording. He had switched it off, realizing he had something he could play for Danny, if Danny would benefit from it. If he wanted to know exactly how the meeting had gone, Steve had the means to show him. Steve knew the decision would be Danny's. No longer would he make the decisions for him and expect his partner to go along with it. He would, if Danny accepted the partnership, make him a full participant in decisions. Steve switched the recorder to OFF and set it aside. The meeting would speak with Kono's own voice in Danny's favor. And Lou's.

But upon thinking about it, Steve was not sure if Lou fully felt the weight of the harm he had done Danny, by holding against him things he had no right to blame Danny for. Steve and Lou might need to talk in private, but it could wait awhile. Lou had retired, and turned in his badge that afternoon. It was clear that he cared about Danny, and felt bad that he was injured. That was a big improvement over what he had felt even two days earlier. Time would tell how deeply the apology ran.

Steve rested while he thought. He was now being weaned off the higher dose of nightly sedative, and had been worried enough that he had only slept a little over an hour after it had been administered. Then he had awakened, but kept still. He knew he needed to rest. If he didn't, the night nurse would probably come in and give him another light dose of sedative, and he wanted to think. It was nice to get closer to the way he usually slept, which was light and easily awakened, especially when he had a lot on his mind.

It deeply bothered Steve that Lou had wanted so badly to be his partner that he had come to resent the man Steve had chosen years before for that job: Detective Danny Williams. It was Steve's choice to make, not Lou's. Lou would never have been his choice, since he did not have the deep friendship with the man that he had with Danny, and Danny could keep up with him on the job, mentally, emotionally, and physically. Steve and Danny were truly as close as brothers. Lou was a good friend.

He wondered how much of Lou's friendship with him had been based on wanting to undermine his close brotherhood with Danny. He was just realizing that, for the past year, whenever he and Danny might have gone on an outing, whether it was camping with Grace, or fishing, or surfing, or having a quiet cookout at Steve's house, that Lou had invited Steve golfing, or out for breakfast, or anything that got him away from his partner. Cookouts turned from private to Five-0 socials, with everyone present and Lou doing most of the cooking, which usually led to jabs at Danny for what he would and would not eat, and from there to 'shooting fish in a barrel' as Kono had put it, always at Danny's expense.

Danny had gone through a rough year, starting with the bone marrow transplant to his son, his son's recovery, and working out with Rachel the custody arrangement he would have with the son that had been kept from him until a medical emergency had forced Rachel to tell him that Charlie was even his son. It had been easy enough for Lou to fill in some time Steve would normally have spent with Danny, but it had gone beyond that. And during so much of what Steve and Lou did, the subject of Danny and how 'different' he was would invariably come up. Steve hadn't even noticed when the teasing became more barbed, then increasingly mean spirited, because it had never occurred to him that Lou was doing anything actually hurtful. He wondered how much longer Lou would have waited to openly ask for Steve to reconsider who was his partner.

Steve realized he would definitely have to watch how much time he spent with Lou, and not let Danny become the butt of jokes.

As for the trouble simmering unnoticed among the Five-0 Task Force, Steve felt he should have seen it coming. It was their sixth year together, and problems left to fend for themselves usually made a mess after that long. In the case of Five-0, it seemed that Danny had been the one designated as the sacrificial lamb, because he was not a man who kept his problems or opinions to himself, and this year, he had had a lot of problems, not the least of which was that he had felt his 'ohana' slipping away from him.

This past week had made that clear to him, as Danny had admitted a couple days earlier. Now that things were on the mend, Danny was the only one who didn't know it.

Steve was glad things had been cleared up with Kono. Danny might take awhile to trust her again, but once she explained why she had seemed to stop caring, he was sure his partner would forgive her, and there were things that could be done as an ohana to gain back the trust. Already Steve was thinking beyond his hospital stay, his recovery from the liver transplant and the other wounds from gunshots that had almost cost him his life. He wasn't ready yet to think about the changes he would have to make to his life because he had come this close to dying. Had Danny not been an essentially perfect match for him to be a living donor for the liver Steve needed, he would have been buried someday last week.

It was a sobering thought.

But he would process that later. He wasn't ready yet. He knew what the changes were that he had to make, and accept, but was taking his time digging into how he felt about all of it. Right now, he had his hands full with putting his ohana back together. He felt guilty that he was the cause of Danny's trials right now. 'That stupid pineapple,' he thought, and wished he had one to smash.

H50 H50 H50 H50

Steve was startled when Dr. Cornett came into the room, and quietly went about checking his readings on the machines he was hooked to at night. He heard the doctor yawn before he finally realized Steve was awake. "Sorry if I disturbed you, Steve. Dr. Simmons is hung up in a long surgery, and he asked me to check on you."

"How's -"

"Danny is holding up well. No change from before." It wasn't exactly hard for Cornett to read Steve's mind.

"I want him to get well. Danno has been through one setback after another."

"Tell me about it." He sighed, then did not quite manage to stifle another yawn.

"Doc, don't you ever sleep?"

"Sleep? What's that?" He rubbed his eyes. "Yeah, I'm tired. I'm just staying close to Danny for a couple more hours. Then I can power-nap. I have one of the most comfortable loungers ever made stashed in the back room of my office. But ICU also has a cot for the doc on call. That's me." He frowned at Steve. "You should be asleep."

"I'm being weaned," said Steve. "I woke up and wanted to think. I'm behaving."

"Hmm. Maybe being weaned too fast. You need your rest."

"I am resting. I just needed to think. I haven't had time to do much of that since the whole plane crash and transplant." He pointed over towards Chin, sleeping on his makeshift bed. "Lots of visitors."

Cornett frowned in thought. "Maybe you can answer me something. Until the other day, I was only aware of Danny's daughter visiting him, sometimes his little son. It was nice today to see more people here who cared about him, but I'm not sure I should allow Kono and ... the big guy ..."

"Lou. Lou Grover."

"...Lou to visit Danny until he is out of ICU. His heart rate did some unhappy things when they were in earlier tonight. But Danny responded very well to you and Chin."

So, even unconscious, Danny had reacted poorly to the two people he was afraid had locked him out of the Five-0 ohana.

"Yeah, doc, that's what the meeting this afternoon was about, actually. Danny had that coughing fit before it was over, and so he doesn't know that things are a lot better now."

"Until he does, I will have to restrict them. It should only be for a couple of days, three at the most."

Steve nodded, and yawned. "I understand. I'm sure they will, too. -You really think Danny's going to make a full recovery?"

Cornett nodded. "The pneumonia was opportunistic, because of the fall, and we caught it early. Once we cure that, he needs to rest his ribs and get some fresh air." Cornett hesitated. "I may be overstepping here, but ... someone hurt him; I can tell. Call it doc's intuition. I can feel that he is hiding some depression, and depressed patients take longer to heal. Should I know something that gives me an edge to better help him recover?"

Steve was startled, and felt that he had to be honest, while not naming names.. "Yes. Some people let him down recently. And Hawaii only cares that I didn't die, not that Danno, er, Danny is the hero who saved my life. He's not a glory seeker, but he knows I got lots of cards and stuff, and nobody thought of him or went to visit him."

"I think that would get to anyone. One more thing: the woman he was with a year ago, Melissa -I have not seen her coming to see him."

Steve lowered his voice, in case Chin was listening. "I don't know everything, but she went back to New York shortly after Valentine's Day. Danny doesn't talk about her, and with him, the only problems he has that we need to worry about are the ones he doesn't talk about. I know he's not dating anyone new."

"Ah. That would explain a lot. Unfortunately, those are the wounds docs can't heal. But I know what to work around now. Thanks." He gave Steve a pat on the arm, avoiding entirely the healing bullet wound. "Try to get some sleep."

"You too, Doc. Thanks for taking such good care of Danno."

"My pleasure. I'll just wander back down to ICU." He waved, and Steve settled down to sleep. He never realized that Cornett had slipped a little more sedative into his IV.

H50 H50 H50 H50

In the next two days, Danny made steady progress in healing. His lungs needed suctioning only a few times in the first 24 hours, but after that, his fever lessened to within a very few tenths of normal, his labs were coming back with marked improvement, and he no longer needed suctioning. The pneumonia succumbed to the antibiotics and other treatments, and with that hurdle cleared, his breathing grew stronger, and with that his blood-oxygen readings.

Grace had not been able to visit, for she had caught a cold. She was promised an extra-long visit with her Daddy when she was well.

Danny's absence from the room was most noted by Kono, and somewhat less by Lou. Lou, upon being told that he was not allowed to visit Danny in ICU, had taken it in stride and decided to use the time he would have spent there in getting the paperwork settled for his retirement and getting started on all city and state permits for him to start up his consulting firm. He still spent hours a day with Steve, Chin, and Kono, always asking solicitously after Danny.

Kono had taken the restriction hard, however. Now that she had her emotions in line with her heart, and was wanting badly to ask his forgiveness, it had hurt her to know he had even reacted poorly to her while unconscious. "I guess this is a way of understanding how Danny felt for so long, wondering if we really cared, and thinking a lot of the time that we really didn't."

Steve and Chin visited as often as Dr. Cornett allowed. Each time, Danny's heart rate and overall condition improved slightly.

H50 H50 H50 H50

It was the third day since the coughing fit, and Danny was grateful to not know much of what had occurred during the time he had been unconscious. He knew that when the sedation had been lifted and he found himself in ICU, with Things attached to him and a Very Unpleasant Thing down his throat, he had started to panic. But his body wasn't paying a lot of attention to commands like "Shout" and "Use bad words" and "Rant" and "Rip out that tube!" because of two things: the Very Unpleasant Thing down his throat, and his extreme fatigue. Panicking took way more energy than he had. He realized that he wasn't quite all there yet, and this was proven by the blurry quality of his vision, and the fact that sounds seemed to come from the Star Wars Universe -someplace far, far away.

What he was hearing, however, was very encouraging. "You are doing really well, Danny." That was Cornett, and Danny had an odd vision of him dressed as Obi-Wan the elder, without the beard, but not that old. It made sense to Danny, but he wasn't sure why. "We are removing the endotracheal tube, if you will just be still for a couple more minutes ... "

He heard that clearly!

Okay, that two minutes was quite unpleasant, but the end of it was that the wretched tube was gone and Danny wasn't even upset that his throat burned and throbbed. When Cornett asked him how he felt, he rasped, "Happy," and smiled. His Doc smiled back. "You are going back to your room with Steve. You have some friends who have waited quite awhile to see you!"

Danny felt memory rushing in, and he stopped smiling. "Who?" he asked, and when told it was Chin, he was fine with that, but somehow he knew Kono and Lou would be mentioned afterwards, and when they were, his heart rate picked up a little speed, for all the wrong reasons. "Oh. Uh, that's nice," he said, but his voice rasped practically into nothing, and the doc held a straw to his lips, giving him time to take a couple of sips of water.

Cornett leaned down and whispered, "I can have visitors wait until you feel more up to it. It will take a little while to get you settled in your room, anyway. You don't have to deal with them right away."

Danny no longer felt happy. He felt like a trapped lab rat again. "I don't think I feel up to much," he admitted. "I'm pretty tired."

"How long, Danny? I can have the nurse shoo everyone but Steve out when you have had enough."

"Uh, okay. Uh, twenty minutes? Maybe they won't think that's too wussy."

Cornett frowned at Danny's choice of word. He could see the depression and anxiety taking a firmer hold. "I'll make you a deal," said Dr. Cornett. "You say 'applesauce', and visiting time is over. If you feel overwhelmed after only two minutes, you say 'applesauce' and the nurse will know to clear the room."

"Um." Danny finally nodded hesitantly. "Okay. Thanks, Doc." They were going to think what they thought, no matter how long or short the visit, and were likely only there to put on a show for Steve. He knew Kono and Lou were not there to see him anyway. They wouldn't like it if he had them sent out because he was too tired, no matter if he was or not.

Soon Danny was transferred to a gurney for the journey up to his room, trying to get his sudden anxiety under control. He was too tired to deal with it, not that it made the anxiety lessen. It made him feel shaky. He wanted to see Steve and Chin, but wished he did not have to deal yet with seeing either Kono or Lou.

H50 H50 H50 H50

It took no time at all to be transferred from the gurney to his fresh bed, and he did manage to catch Steve's eyes and smile wanly. Behind him were the rest of Five-0, looking especially delighted to see him. He smiled at them collectively, and was swarmed by two nurses who hooked him up to the monitors in the room, while his pillow was fluffed and his blanket smoothed out just right over his middle. He was poured ice water in a blue cup, and he thought everyone would have sore faces from smiling, while his heart beat too fast and his hands shook if he didn't keep them clutching at his blanket. He noticed that Nurse Bridget was unobtrusively hovering near the door.

"Welcome back," said Steve, grinning like a silly kid. But there was some tension at the edges of his grin, something Danny wanted to figure out, but had no time as Kono came and gave him a hug. "Welcome back," she whispered, kissing his cheek, and he could have sworn she meant it, except how could she? Chin was next, with a handshake and a hug. "Missed you, brah." Okay, he meant it. And then there was Lou, also swamping him with a hug, and one of his special handshakes. "You gotta stop scaring us! We brought you balloons."

"And a card," said Steve, holding up something big and brightly colored. He was trying to hide that he was as tense as a bowstring.

"And a bouquet of irises," said Kono, holding up a vase filled with the blue staple of bouquets in Hawaii and the contiguous 48 states nationwide. Danny had no clue about Alaskan bouquets.

"And a fruit basket with no pineapple in it at all," said Chin, pointing to it on his bedside table. He would have to be very careful how he turned on and off his lamp.

"Welcome home!" they all said at once, and blew party toot horns.

"Thanks, everyone. Thanks." Not exactly exuberantly said, but try as he might, he could not get the smile to reach his eyes, so he looked at his flowers and fruit and card, and four balloons tied to the foot rail of his bed.

"The Five-0 ohana is back together!" cheered Kono.

Ohana. Danny's smile hung on for dear life, but gave up when Lou wagged a finger at him. "Not quite. I'm not carrying a badge anymore, brah. I retired! Gonna start a consulting firm. You and Big Boss are definitely stuck with each other now."

Danny watched Steve's smile freeze. Everyone but Lou became tense like Steve, while Danny's smile slowly died. Suddenly everything seemed so unutterably fake that he couldn't stand it another second.

Lou had quit rather than keep working with him. A twist of the knife, AND a jibe at his height.

Before he had even decided to voice his thoughts, he said wearily, "Let's just cut the crap. I already told Steve I quit, so what 'ohana'? I know how you feel about me." He turned to Nurse Bridget. His voice broke. "Applesauce."


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

 **A/N** : Your reviews have really cheered me this week! I had a bit of a rough week, and seeing people enjoying this story has really made the difference between a bad week and a great week! Thank you so much! I want to give everyone a hug!

We still haven't gotten to the mysterious contents of The Box, but we will because it comes into next chapter, as does Gracie getting to talk to her Danno, as well as Steve's and Kono's talks with Danny. It will be a long chapter!

I don't own H50. I merely play with CBS's lovely toys.

 **Chapter 16**

Danny kept his head turned away from the confused commotion on Steve's side of the room when he had used the code word his doctor had given him to have visitors cleared from the room. "Applesauce," he repeated, and Nurse Bridget, biting her lip and looking sad and startled and a whole lot of things Danny didn't have the energy to sort out, came forward and spoke gently, "Everyone but Steve, perhaps you can visit at a time when Danny is not so tired? Later today, or tomorrow?"

"What?" growled Lou, stepping forward to grip Danny's right arm, above his wrist. "You kicking us out, man? Is that fair? We aint had a minute yet to explain anything! That's low, even for you!" He huffed. "I'm not ready to go."

"Lou," warned Steve, tossing his blanket aside and swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. "Don't push it. Give Danny some time to adjust to being out of ICU."

"Get your hand off my arm," Danny demanded hoarsely. Lou's grip tightened.

"Lou! Stop!" shouted four voices. Kono, Chin, Steve and Nurse Bridget were all trying to get Lou to let go, but the more they did, the harder he gripped, and was now pushing down on Danny's arm. Danny felt bruising and his hand was purple and tingling.

"Dammit, Lou, let GO!" Danny got a hold of Lou's pinky and forced it outward sharply until the grip on his arm was loosened.

"OW, you mangy runt!" howled Lou, eyes blazing. "You tried to bust my pinky!"

Danny was trembling from temper and incredulity that this was even happening. "No, I tried to dislocate it! Are you insane? -You tried to break my arm!" He was rubbing it, trying to get the circulation back to normal. Lou's fingers had dug furrows into his skin, which were already showing dark bruising.

"I must insist you leave!" said Nurse Bridget, her voice firm though frightened. She had taken up a protective stance on Danny's left side. She had already hit the button to call another nurse.

Chin hauled Lou away from Danny's bed, toward the door. Kono was trying to get Steve to sit back down on his bed, but that was a losing battle. Steve was in full protective mode, watching Lou like he would a snake.

"Lou, just go. We should have given Danny more time," said Kono, shocked and upset.

"He just had three effing days in ICU for a stupid coughing fit! How much longer does he need?" Lou pushed Chin away, then reached forward and deliberately mussed Danny's hair with both hands. "Fine, play the baby." He continued, enunciating precisely. "You are just a New Jersey runt, Danno."

The use of the name only his children and partner had permission to use took away his last vestige of calm. "Please get him out of here," whispered Danny, to anyone and everyone, still rubbing his arm and hand, to get the circulation back. He was breathing rapidly, painfully, from anger and a hurt that was building into more than his body could handle.

"Lou! Go!" barked Chin and Kono simultaneously. Kono was trying to smooth Danny's hair back into place with her fingers. She was being very gentle, but her attention was torn between protecting Danny and watching Lou.

Steve was on guard, too. "Now," ordered Steve in his dangerous voice. "Nurse, call Security."

Another nurse came running in, and Bridget asked her sharply to call Security. The nurse's deep brown braids flipped around as she ran back out of the room. They could hear her yelling for Hospital Security.

"Don't trouble yourselves. I'm leaving," grumbled Lou, but his eyes were blazing at Danny. He was fully in Danny's line of vision. "This grudge-holding wuss aint worth my time." He leaned into Danny and said, "Danno." Then he smiled and stepped backwards toward the door.

"DON'T EVER call me that again," hissed Danny, voice shaking and thin. He was on the verge of trying to force himself to try and get up.

Lou's smile grew. "What, Danno? You say somethin', Danno?" he asked, his voice silky.

Danny grabbed a large red apple from his fruit basket and hurled it like a baseball at Lou's head. From that short distance, it didn't miss. It hit him on his forehead, a few inches above his left eye, then ricocheted almost straight up, then back down. Lou caught it, and kept smiling. He walked the two steps to Danny's bedside, grabbed him hard by the neck and pushed him down into the pillow.

The whole room erupted into a cacophony of pandemonium, during which twice in quick succession Lou smashed the base of the apple against Danny's left eye, stunning him, before he let go. Danny cried out as his eye felt like it had exploded into fire, and the din in the room grew less distinct and farther away. He did hear Lou's voice. "You throw like a girl," Lou spat disgustedly, from somewhere near the parking lot, before Lou grunted.

Danny's brain circuits were on overload. He felt dizzy, and his left eye was screaming and burning while his vision went generally haywire. He could feel his eye watering like crazy. His brain was jumbling thoughts, like a blender set on Slow, but he was aware of Kono crying, "Oh God! His eye!" Five people were calling his name, but all he could do was cry out, "I can't see, it burns!" while hands kept him from reaching for his eye. He stopped processing sounds, even the ones he was making, because nothing audio made sense anymore. But he felt the cervical collar go on. When the panic hit, his brain fried and he went from stupor to fully passed out.

H50 H50 H50 H50

Steve had leaped at Lou and grabbed the arm that had grabbed Danny by the neck, and everyone was shouting but Danny, who couldn't get a breath in or out until Lou let go of him. Kono had pulled back to punch Lou, but he brought down his apple before she could deliver her blow. Chin yanked on the arm holding Danny pinned to the pillow, pulling Lou back as soon as he let go.

Dr. Cornett had come running when Security was called to his patient's room. He had seen the attack, and had immediately made a fist with both hands together and brought them down on the nerve center to one side of Lou's shoulder. Grover collapsed, temporarily stunned. Steve ordered Chin to cuff Lou and get him out, to book him on assault on a police officer. Security had arrived in time to help Chin haul a conscious and combative Lou out.

Cornett, quietly furious, pulled on gloves and mask and went right to work, while Steve and Kono stood to one side. It was hard to tell who was holding whom up. "Steve, what just happened?" whispered Kono, but Steve just shook his head and stared at Danny. He was glad his partner stopped trying weakly to fight everything after the collar was put on him by an orderly.

After checking over Danny's eye socket and eye, the former already swelling and bleeding more even as they watched, and the latter leaking pink-tinted tears constantly, Cornett studied the pattern of smashing on the apple, and his frown deepened. "Nurse, alert radiology and page Dr. Ha Koa. I need him in ER STAT. Possible corneal tear." He turned to Steve and Kono, and yanked down his mask. "If you need photos for evidence, take them now. We're moving him down to ER as soon as the gurney arrives."

Kono snapped into action, and put her camera phone to good use, sniffling as she took pictures of Danny's injuries.

"How bad, Doc?" asked Steve, worried.

Cornett looked grim and avoided making eye contact. "Not sure yet."

H50 H50 H50 H50

Steve and Kono stayed in the hospital room from which Danny was again missing. Steve was back in bed, ordered there by Nurse Bridget. He and Kono were silent, drinking the last of what had been hot tea when brought to them.

Kono's phone buzzed. It was Chin. He asked to talk to Steve, so Kono handed her phone over. She had already sent the photos of Danny's injuries to her cousin, in charge of booking their former colleague.

Steve listened, said, "What?" sharply, and ran his non-phone hand through his hair. "Okay, Chin, keep me updated."

"What is it, Boss?"

"Lou collapsed on the way to booking. He's in ER at Queens Hospital. He's conscious but confused, doesn't remember anything that happened in the last couple hours or so."

Nurse Bridget brought Steve's medications and mini-meal, and a full sized meal for Kono. "I think you earned it," she said. Neither was hungry, but both thanked the nurse and ate their meals. Thankfully, neither was liver.

Ninety minutes later, Kono's phone buzzed again, and this time she just handed it to Steve. "It's Chin again."

"Yeah?" said Steve, into the phone.

"Steve, how's Danny?"

"We don't know yet. How's Lou?"

"His blood pressure is way high, and his labs are all out of whack. The doc here thinks Lou had an Extreme Anxiety Reaction from essentially an overdose on caffeine and some allergy meds he was taking. He'd had three energy drinks this afternoon, and two Sudafed. I talked to Lou, and he said he's been anxious a lot lately about work, and not sleeping since the whole plane thing, when you got shot, and the meeting, starting the consulting firm." Steve listened as Chin paused, took a deep breath and forged ahead. "He remembers what he did to Danny, and he's broken. He can't believe he did any of it, but he knows he did and takes full responsibility, and wants to apologize to him if Danny will let him. Renee is with him. He'll be staying the night in the hospital, for observation, and to clean out all that junk in his system."

"Okay, well. I'll have to talk to his doc and talk to Danny before we can decide what to do about the charges. I'm still damn mad."

"Yeah," said Chin. "Me too. Should I stay here, or come back to Tripler?"

"Come back here. Danny is gonna need us. Have Renee call us if there's any news."

"On my way."

H50 H50 H50 H50

Danny was happy Dr. Cornett came with him when he was returned to his room. He wouldn't have to explain anything. All he had to do was greet Steve, Chin, and Kono. "Where's Lou?"

"Queens." Steve partially explained, looking his partner over while Chin filled in the rest. Danny had the puffiest, blackest shiner he had ever seen, a couple steri-stips that stood out starkly against the dark bruising around his eye, faint bruises on his neck, and the shape in deep purple of Lou's fingers where they had bruised his arm above the wrist. For the bruises on his arm, Cornet prepped a fresh ice pack while listening to Chin.

"Danny, do you want me to leave?" asked Kono hesitantly.

"Nah. Nah, you tried to help me. And you fixed my hair," said Danny, and smiled slightly.

Kono smiled back. "Can we talk, uhm, when you're up to it? I owe you an apology."

Danny hesitated. "I probably owe you one or two, too. Sure. Just ... let's enjoy this nice, un-crazy moment." He sighed. "I'm sorry about Lou, but he should know better than to drink all that stuff and mix it with pills. Doc told me you arrested him. You can drop charges, but I don't want to see him yet."

"He would like to personally apologize to you, Danny," said Chin, feeling glad and relieved that Danny was willing to forgive Kono.

Danny stowed his smile, at least temporarily. "I can forgive him for the shiner and the bruises, but the rest ... give me a little time. If he means to apologize for that stuff too."

"That's fair enough," said Steve, and was proud of Danny. He looked his partner over. "So ... how is he?" he asked Cornett.

"Pretty much what you see. His arm is worse than his neck, but neither is a worry. He has that un-hide-able class 10 shiner, orbital bruising, a couple steri-strips. Danny has two scratches on his cornea; we are treating those with antibiotic drops. Bruised sclera, meaning the white of his eye is now a rather alarming red. Vision will be fine. Who knew the bottom thingies on an apple could be weaponized?"

Danny said, grinning, "I just heard a doctor say 'thingies'." He didn't care if his ribs hurt as everyone, including Cornett, laughed. Danny lay back against his pillow, feeling relaxed for the first time in eons. "I love you guys."

Kono had to stand behind Chin to hide her tear-filled but bright smile. Steve and Chin were both beaming.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

 **A/N** : Well…I realized a bridge was needed to set up the whole everyone talks to everyone chapter, and here is the bridge. Danny hadn't really had a chance to think about things, and he needed to do that. So this chapter is a lot of thinking. I apologize if a lack of action, dialogue, interaction.

I must thank all reviewers and readers for your attention to this story. I am so grateful! I welcome constructive criticism, so don't hesitate. If you don't want to put anything negative in a review, put it in a PM to me, and I promise I don't bite. I reply to reviews as time permits, and try to welcome all new readers to the story. It's gotten far longer than I ever thought it would! Thanks for sticking with me! Thank you so much!

The next chapter really Scouts Honor will have the elements in it this one was supposed to have. Stories have a life of their own, and it sounds strange to say, but sometimes writers are at the mercy of the story. We learn a lot about Danny's thinking in this chapter, so Danny fans, this one is for you!

CBS owns Hawaii Five-0, I make no profit from this story. It is just for fun.

 **Chapter 17**

Soon after, the moment of relaxation was ended when Steve was called down for his much-delayed physical therapy appointment, and Danny was ordered to get some rest. With lighter hearts than any of them had felt since Steve had been shot in the plane, the cousins made a dinner reservation and went to their homes to shower and change. Steve was wheeled to his PT, and Danny was left alone in the room. His ribs ached, but not as fiercely as they had. Breathing was not comfortable, but compared to how it had been, he could almost throw a party. The throbbing pain in his eye, the deep hand-print-shaped ache in his arm, were easy to ignore.

Danny was used to pain. He could deal with this. The pneumonia was being chased and beaten down by antibiotics, and without that need to cough, he was doing much better. All in all, he was finally healing, not just physically, but emotionally and psychologically as well. Even with his new bruises and the alarming black eye, he felt better than he had since he realized in the plane how seriously Steve's gunshot wounds were. He felt as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders, with the promise of more weights being lifted off in the future.

He realized this was the first time since the fall that he had gotten a chance to process his thoughts and feelings about so much that had happened. There had been that short time on the patio, after the shock of learning there were major problems in the ohana, and they orbited around Danny, but that had not been a time of this kind of reflection. He had not known then what the problem was, only that it seemed to directly involve him. It had been more the worry before one receives devastating bad news, after already having received devastating news, after physical and psychological pain had already been at work and taken their toll for a long, long awhile. It was kicking a man who was not just down, but who had been knocked down again and again and again, physically, emotionally, psychologically, who had finally reached the point where he could not figure out a way to get back up one more time.

Knowing that Kono, Chin and Lou were avoiding him while he recovered from the liver transplant had been the blow that had flattened Danny.

Now that he had received the bad news, and a lot of it had been addressed one way or the other, Danny needed to work through it in his mind and heart. Why had this, of all the things he had gone through, broken him? He needed to figure it out.

H50 H50 H50 H50

When Steve had been shot, Danny had thought there was the real possibility that Steve would die. It had scared him beyond panic, but he had seen those close to him die before. So why had his feelings this time been like tsunami-warning sirens going off in his heart? He had felt that when his Newark police partner, Grace, had died. But she was dead before he could even help her. Her death had been overshadowed to his friends and colleagues by the national and personal grief of the events of 9/11. At the time he had been quietly working through Grace's loss, he too had been grieving with a nation attacked by terrorists, with a death toll people were still reeling at. His whole world -everyone's whole world- was changed forever, but for Danny, he would never be able to think of 9/11 without also feeling the sharp, tearing pain of his partner's murder, and the personal guilt he felt that she had died, and that there had not been a thing he could do to stop it or to help her in her last moments.

Grace's funeral had been one of many funerals attended in the aftermath of 9/11. Danny's pain was not ignored, but it was overshadowed to many of his fellow officers by that even bigger national pain. So, in a way that only his wife and colleagues knew honored his murdered partner, and said forever how deeply he had felt her death, he had named his newborn baby daughter Grace, so his partner Grace would be daily in his thoughts as he watched his little daughter grow into as fine a woman. His daughter was on her way.

Then there was his brother, Matty. His little brother, whom he had loved since the day he was born. His little brother had grown into a crook, the way Danny had become a cop. Only, Danny did not know what Matty had gotten into. He had not known until that awful day when he found out, and realized the extent of the betrayal of one brother to another. Matty had challenged him both brother to brother, and criminal to cop, to either shoot him or let him walk away, still every millimeter of his body the crook, the thief, the manipulator, the betrayer he was. The little boy who had worshiped his big brother had stooped to taunting him by telling him the only way to stop his criminal activities was to shoot him, which Matty knew rightly that the brother in Danny could not do.

Danny could not shoot his brother, not even just to wound him. He had not been able to do it. Matty had boarded a private plane and flown out of his life. Nothing in his life had hurt Danny worse than to be betrayed out of the blue by someone he had loved and trusted since Matty's birth. If there was a worst case scenario for Danny, this was it. For Danny, Matty's sudden death would have been easier to deal with. A car accident, an aneurysm, anything sudden, which could have let him keep the untarnished memories of a brother he had loved and respected, who had loved and respected him in return. But in the end, Matty had neither loved nor respected him. He had betrayed him in every way. Away Matty flew, with Danny wondering where the love had gone, wondering if he still respected himself, knowing somehow that the weakness he had shown in not at least wounding Matty would come to haunt him.

It had haunted him. It had not ended with a plane flying off into the night sky. It had ended with the troubles caused by what Matty had done. When Matty could not repay Marco Reyes, to whom he owed millions, Reyes had come to Danny's doorstep and demanded the money from him, in exchange for Matty's life.

Purposefully, Danny kept his thoughts away from everything that had happened which had brought him, with Steve, to stand before the man who had taken the money in exchange for Matty, and had repaid Danny with the sight of his dead brother, chopped up and stuffed into an oil drum. Not Matty alive, which would have been hard in many ways to deal with, but with Matty's mutilated body stuffed carelessly, unfeelingly into a barrel. Danny had lost control. He had exacted revenge. And he had been far more merciful than Reyes had been to his baby brother.

Danny hated to think about that time, and the events that followed. The important thing was that he had killed Matty's killer. He had demanded the petrified Reyes look into his hell-to-pay, merciless eyes, then shot him right between them, in cold blood. And he had to live with that. The good cop had to live with becoming a cold blooded murderer. He did not regret killing Reyes. He did regret that he had had to break his own moral code. How would he look himself in the eyes? How would he look his daughter in the eyes, knowing he was a murderer?

Living with what he had done had cost him dearly. He did not think in detail about what happened after that, except to cover it over with that word, "after". Even Chin, Kono, and Lou did not know that Danny had killed Reyes in cold blood. Only Steve knew. He had been there. He had seen the change, the still-faced silence that came over Danny afterwards. Everyone but Steve thought Danny had shot in self-defense and was grieving his brother's death, because that is what he and Steve had told everyone. To himself, Danny became a liar and cold blooded murderer. And he had vowed, in the months to follow, that he would not be those things ever again.

Nobody but Danny knew that -after a few months of carrying the burden alone, for he would not even let Steve help him with this- he had sought help from a priest. He literally could not get past what he had done, and would not put the burden of it on anyone else (although Steve knew some of what he was going through), and it was either slide into an even unhealthier depression than he was already in, or seek someone's help. Danny had been raised Catholic, rather strictly, and Grace went to a Catholic private school, but it was more for safety and good education than because Danny was deeply into the faith. But this one time, he had felt so overburdened that he had gone to a priest and confessed what he had done. He and the priest had talked awhile, and it had helped Danny gain some much-needed perspective. He had received his penance and been given absolution. His soul was clean again.

But, while according to Catholic doctrine, God had forgiven and forgotten his sins, Danny never could. Try as he might, the whole thing still kept him awake at night, still gave him nightmares, and he still refused to talk to anyone but the priest about the depths of his pain. What he told Steve was only a small fraction of what there was to tell. This was Danny's burden to carry.

When Steve had been shot, the situation was different than it had been with either his partner, Grace, or his brother Matty. This time, maybe he could save Steve. He would do all he could to save him. And if that meant crash-landing a plane on Waikiki beach, so be it. If that meant giving Steve half his liver, so be it. Steve had become closer to him than a brother. Steve was his best friend. Steve had somehow clawed and scraped and kicked and scratched his way into Danny's heart and become the person he was closest to in his life. He loved his kids beyond words, beyond anything even approaching words. But they were his kids, and there were things in his life he would protect them from as long as he could. He could not tell them what he went through on a daily basis on his job. Sooner or later, their innocence would be taken from them, but for as long as he could, he would shelter them from the part of the world that would be only too happy to hurt them, to destroy their hope and capacity to see what was good and kind in the world. Danny could not talk about his job with Gracie, let alone little Charlie.

But Steve knew those things they saw every day, experienced too often, that Danny shielded his children from. Steve shared those things. Steve was a good man -crazy super-SEAL and all- and he drove Danny nuts with the way he just expected Danny to have his back when the odds of anyone coming out alive were so highly stacked against them that he didn't know how Steve even did what he did. But Steve did it, and Danny backed him up, and was not pushing up daisies. Steve was doing everything crazy he could think of, but he was also doing something that worked.

It had not been on anything crazy that had almost cost Steve everything. Steve was just piloting a plane, albeit a drug smuggler plane, while undercover, with Danny sitting in the co-pilot's seat, playing his mechanic. Dangerous, sure, but so was everything remotely normal that they did. This, though, had been the time Steve and death came entirely too close together.

But Danny's half a liver had saved Steve's life. Finally, Danny had one in the Win Column. He had done something totally right. He had finally in a small way felt that he could let go of the burden of killing Marco Reyes, and watching his partner Grace die before his eyes. Finally, because he had not just saved Steve, but had NOT killed in cold blood the man who had almost killed Steve -even before he, Kono, Chin, and Lou knew just how grave Steve's condition was- he had redeemed himself. He had been faced with the two things from his past that haunted his sleeping and waking hours, and had made them right. Steve had been saved. And Danny had not murdered someone in cold blood when he had the will and the way to do it. One shot. Just one simple shot. So easy. But he had stepped away, turned off the hate. And now he could start to let the past begin to heal. He could really think about moving forward. Life was going to be much better now. Finally. The worst day of his life had freed him from the other two worst days. The sun was rising. After so much inner darkness, the sun was rising.

Then Danny realized his co-workers were going to almost absurd lengths to avoid him. Not that Steve was, for after three days in a separate bay in ICU, Danny was transferred to a regular room in Tripler, while Steve was still in ICU. Just when Danny finally felt he could be more at ease with his colleagues, because he had let go the burden of the secrets he was carrying, they were avoiding him.

H50 H50 H50 H50

When Danny had learned what it was that had kept Kono and Lou away from visiting him, he had felt again that deep sense of betrayal. It was at such a bad time, too. He had been looking forward to the company of his ohana. He could look them all in the eyes again without feeling deep in the depths a sense that they would see him for the liar and murderer he was. He had shown his character, his integrity, and they were rejecting him because they felt he was without integrity or good character because he had not shot the man who had nearly killed Steve. He got hurt too often, complained too much, and he might say something he had yet to say, except to himself.

At least Chin didn't feel that way. He and Chin were on good terms, possibly even better terms than before. Chin had been a stalwart friend to everyone all through this.

Then came Kono. Kono had said she wanted to apologize to him, and had shown concern. While Lou was attacking him, she had done more than just come to his aid. She had acted like a friend. Her actions had spoken louder to him than her words. He owed it to her to hear her out, to give her a chance to explain herself. Danny admitted he would have to steel himself because he did not know what she would say. But he owed it to the entire Five-0 Task Force to at least listen to her. He knew if the task force was reduced to co-workers, without the closeness they had had in the past, it would hurt their effectiveness. Their effectiveness in part stemmed largely from their chemistry, their friendship in office and out.

Danny and Kono had been friends for years. The last two had been less close, but so much had happened in that time, not the least of which was Kono's marriage to Adam Noshimura. Danny didn't know Adam well at all, but in his heart he was skeptical of a former Yakuza Boss's entry into the world of law abiding, above-board citizen. The reason he gave Adam the benefit of the doubt was because he trusted Kono's judgment.

So what had happened in the last two years?

Immediately, quietly, into Danny's mind came Lou Grover's interactions and then addition to the Task Force.

And Danny knew, with a cop's intuition and a personal sense of hitting the bull's eye, that this was it.

He looked at his bruised arm, and was aware of the throbbing in his blackened eye. The things that Lou had said to him that afternoon, even if under the influence of a combination of massive caffeine intake and stimulant-rich allergy medication, were almost certainly things he had at least thought to some degree. That's what came out most of the time when drugs loosened someone's tongue. Who had Lou bee-lined toward to be his closest friend on the Task Force? Steve. He wanted to be Steve's partner. Who was in his way? Danny. Chin was unshakeable, but Kono was more vulnerable, because she did have problems at home, especially now that Adam had been in prison over a year. She and Lou spent a lot of time together on the job. And sometime in the past couple of years, Kono had developed an aversion to Danny.

Coincidence?

No cop believed in coincidence.

If Lou had gotten to Kono, and set about poisoning her mind against him, he would surely be more willing to forgive her. It would depend on if she realized that is what had happened. If that wasn't what had made her change her feelings toward him, he would have to simply listen and then react with as calm a head as he could. He was hurt by what she had said about him. She had hit bone. If they got past this, things would take time to rebuild. Trust destroyed was hard to gain back, if it was even possible to gain it back. Only time would tell on that question. But Danny was willing to try, while being fully aware of what it would take.

Could he forgive Kono? For all their sakes, he would try.

Two things Danny now knew: things in the Task Force had changed, if only in personal dynamics, with the addition of Lou, and Lou had quit when Steve made it clear that he was not switching partners. And he would give Kono a chance. If her mind had been poisoned over time, he owed it to their past friendship, and to the Task Force. But it would not be easy. He did not kid himself on that. It would take time to return to anything like the friendship they had built before.

When Lou had attacked him, and said things Danny remembered far more clearly than he did the events of the actual attack, he had felt such a sense of relief when Lou was removed from the room. It wasn't something he had realized at the time, but afterwards, knowing Lou had not only turned in his badge but had physically attacked him in his hospital bed –in front of the whole of the Task Force, no less- and been arrested, Danny had felt an overwhelming sense of relief behind the other emotions at the time. Danny, on at least a subconscious level, had been uncomfortable around Lou, and he only knew that he had been, not when it had started. When he had known he was returning from ER to a room with no Lou in it, he had been far more relaxed than could be explained by the knowledge that his vision was not damaged.

Danny's thoughts were interrupted by Steve returning to the room from his physical therapy session. He looked spent, a little embarrassed. "Hard workout, Steve?"

Steve was helped by an orderly back into his bed. "Thanks, Jace," he said to the orderly, who nodded and left. "Omigod, Danny, you have no idea! I am as weak as a kitten. It's humiliating how little it takes to tire me right now! I barely did anything!"

Danny had trouble getting his mind around that, until he realized he too would be in physical therapy soon, and he was not in marathon shape. "We can have hall races, when I catch up to you on the PT schedule. Two old geezers impersonating Steve McGarrett and Danny Williams can shuffle like mad up the hall and back, first one to the water fountain buys the other a cold one."

"We can't have beers yet."

"Oh yeah. How quickly the mind forgets what it wants to. Uh, lemonade?"

Steve, leaning back, grinned. "Lemonades. I could drink one now."

As if on cue, the nurse came in with their dinners and meds. Steve grabbed his pitcher of ice water and drank straight from it, bypassing his cup entirely.

"Animal," Danny said, shaking his head tolerantly.


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18**

 **A/N** : I think I got everyone thanked this time! I hope so! Reviews mean a lot to me, and I cherish each one!

I only fit in half of what I wanted to in this chapter, and it still has the longest word count of any chapter so far. That is why I broke it into two. Besides, you guys had waited long enough for this chapter! It took so long because the 4th of July weekend came along, and there were a lot of activities which prevented me from writing for a few days.

If you have any constructive critique, feel free to let me know. It's helpful!

CBS owns Hawaii Five-0, and now that Season 7 is filming, I'm hoping it is good!

 **Chapter 18**

Danny ate the hospital food without any enthusiasm whatsoever, except when they were allowed to have a cookie, or a brownie, or Lord-above-thank-you a doughnut. Tonight, dessert was for the first time a baked glazed doughnut, on the small side. It wasn't up to par with malasadas or any of the amazing types of doughnuts he could name. But it was a doughnut, and it was glazed, and as soon as he saw it, he imagined eating a baker's dozen of them.

Therefore, when he dutifully worked his way through the little fish patty (baked, not fried), the string beans (no butter or margarine), the half cup of sliced, ripe strawberries, the hard roll that well-earned its name (again no butter), he looked upon his doughnut as if it had personally been delivered from Heaven, and closed his eye as he took that first bite.

After that, he wished he had left the strawberries for last, because this doughnut was one tough specimen. He remembered the joke about fruit cake: a man died of mysterious causes, and during the medical examiner's autopsy, it was discover that, at some point in the man's life, he had eaten fruitcake. Danny imagined that the chewy rock he had just barely managed to swallow would sit unhappily in his stomach for the next twenty-five years of his life. Maybe longer.

"Wow, Danny, that is the best doughnut I've ever had," glowed Steve, spewing crumbs because that's how Danny's partner was during periods of eating: apparently no one in his life had ever told him not to talk with his mouth full. Danny promptly offered him the one-bite-shy-of-whole doughnut and Steve accepted it with incredulity. "Thank you! You sure? You love these!"

"Yeah, Steve, uh, you need more food than I do, and I'm too full." He watched Steve down it in two messy bites, followed by a smile of sincere appreciation. Danny swore he could hear the bites 'sploosh' when they hit his stomach.

Trays were collected soon, saline eye drops were put in his black eye, to keep it moist and give the cornea a good environment in which to heal, and a companionable silence fell. Danny rested, and thought again about what a wild day it had been. His ribs were content enough if he did not breathe deeply quickly. He had learned to pull in a deep breathe slowly and hold it, then let it out. He was healing, even if there was a dull ache in his arm, and his black eye did not feel happy. It was also difficult to see with just one eye, because his depth perception was off and everything looked flat. He had already learned during dinner that he had to use eating implements carefully, because when he thought he was aiming for his mouth, he might hit the side of his face just to one side or other.

"Danny, you sleeping?" whispered Steve.

Danny opened his available eye and turned his head toward his partner. "Nah. Just mulling over the day."

"Me, too." Steve was studying him, and therefore Danny waited for Steve to say what was on his mind. "How's the eye feel? I gotta tell ya, buddy, you look like you lost that fight."

Danny grimaced. "I did lose that fight."

"So ... you sure you want the charges to be dropped?"

It was one of those questions where what Danny wanted to do and what he would do were very different. He wanted Lou to get what was coming to him. But to do that, it would expose to the world that there was trouble between members of the Five-0 Task Force, and for them he was willing to let Lou off the hook, even though Lou was no longer part of the task force. The public did not yet know that. That is what he told Steve. He also reiterated that he did not yet want to see Lou. "It might take awhile for me to feel up to that. Maybe let my eye get to the point where it opens and isn't proof of just what a number he did on it. I mean, what would you do?"

Steve shook his head. "I dunno, Danno." He furrowed his dark brows. "What you're doing, probably, and for the same reasons. But, I keep hearing what he said, and seeing what he did, and feeling like I suddenly don't even know the guy. Lou said stuff, and did stuff I genuinely can't believe. I know the whole thing with the energy drinks and Sudafed, but that doesn't excuse it. In a way, it makes it worse."

"He's your friend, though, Steve. He made a mistake. He's sorry." Danny didn't for a moment believe it would be easy for Steve, any more than it would be easy for him. Obviously, Lou and Danny were people who had worked together, but any illusion of friendship had ended with the things Lou had said and done that afternoon.

"Is he?" asked Steve. "If he can attack you like that, and do that to your arm and your eye, and grab you by the neck, is he my friend? He attacked you, and you're my partner."

"He wouldn't have done it without the drinks and pills." Danny didn't want to make it harder on Steve. The truth was that he had found what Lou did to be nearly unforgivable. It was definitely not going to be easy to really forgive the man, no matter what had loosened his inhibitions enough to let him actually do things he never would have without the excuse of an adrenaline overdose.

Steve was furrowing his brows as if he were knitting a sweater, or another afghan for his couch. "HE wanted to be my partner. How much of his 'friendship' for me was genuine? How much of it just wanting me to can you and make him my partner? I dunno, Danny. I think I'm fairly forgiving, but ... this is hard."

Danny very carefully took a drink from his flat blue tumbler, and didn't dribble any water down his chin. "I know. It is for me, too. I can forgive a lot, but I'm going to try, even though this feels like it is right at the edge of what I can do. Still, maybe this sounds corny, but I have to set a good example for my kids, even when they don't know that is what I'm trying to do. It did hurt, what he said. It hurt, a lot. I think that is why I have to try harder to get past it, and that means forgiving him. But I think his friendship with you is genuine. I saw how worried he was at the plane crash site."

"But when he disrespected you, and then attacked you, he damaged my trust, my friendship. If he hadn't already turned in his badge, I'd be asking for it now."

Danny focused his one open eye on Steve. "And it would be fair for you to do that. But don't throw away a friendship until you are sure it was not real." He could not believe he was in some small way sticking up for Lou, but it was what he believed. "Give yourself time to think about it. And ... I have your back, whatever you decide."

"Thanks, Danny. A lot. Speaking of which," continued Steve, and his voice had changed from 'talking about Lou' to 'something else'. Danny wondered what Steve had on his mind.

"So, do you still want to quit?"

The question startled Danny. Of all the thinking he had done that afternoon, none of it had been about quitting. He realized that he had tossed that idea out the window when Lou attacked him, and he had known deep down that Lou was never going to be part of the Task Force again. Plus, he was committed to giving Kono another chance. "Um, no. You said you would not let me quit, so I changed my mind and do not want to quit."

Steve kept his face expressionless. "So, you want to be my partner?"

Danny suddenly felt like he was on shifting sands, and something was going on that he wasn't sure about. Slowly, he said, "Yesss. Is that a problem?"

Steve was giving him a Very Serious Look. Danny finally asked, "What's with the Stone Face?" Suddenly, he felt very tense, and that bite of doughnut in his stomach was doing weird things. "Are you trying to ask me to turn in my badge?"

A flicker of a grin flitted across Steve's face before it was again eclipsed entirely by Stone Face. "It's just, you see, I never actually asked you if you wanted to be my partner. I hijacked you." Stone Face went away as if it never existed, to be replaced by Unsure Face. "So, I thought, you know, that I should ask you. Formally. Danny Williams, would you like to be my partner on the Five-0 Task Force?"

Danny caught on. He put on his own Stone Face. "So I have a choice, now?"

"Yes, you have a choice now. But I hope you will say yes, because I want you as my partner."

Danny nodded, seriously. "I would like that very much, Steve. But I have a couple of conditions before I can totally commit."

Steve looked startled. "You do?"

"I do."

"Uh. Okay. So, what are they?"

Danny held up two fingers, and counted each point off in turn. "Twice a week, all day long, I get to drive my own car on cases, I don't care what happens! When we can drive again, that is. And you stop forgetting your wallet, and you keep money in it."

"Technically, that's three conditions."

Danny added a third finger, and ticked it off. "Then I have three conditions. Take it or leave it." He put his hands back down on the blanket.

Steve nodded very soberly. "Okay. I think we can work with that, tho I may forget about them."

"Then I want them in writing."

"Danny! Are you serious?"

"Of course I'm serious! I can NOT afford to pay for everything you forget your wallet for, when I have child support payments, a mortgage -neither of which you have- and my car insurance is through the roof because you keep driving my car into things and getting bullet holes in it!" Danny was pursing his lips to keep from smiling.

"Oh. I, uh, never thought about it like that. So, um, maybe one day a week you could drive?"

"Nope, two. Let's say Tuesdays and Thursdays. That still gives you the potential of five days out of the week to abuse my car, since we frequently work weekends. I think only asking for two days a week is very reasonable."

Steve cleared his throat. "Okay, uh, deal. You drive a hard bargain, Danny."

"Yes. Yes I do."

"You could have just asked for a raise."

"This was more fun. For a second there you almost did Aneurysm Face. Seriously, if you want to give me one, I will not complain! But if you start paying for stuff you usually palm off onto me, it will be like getting a raise." He grinned then, and laughed. "Partner."

Steve grinned back. "Partner." His grin stiffened just a little when Danny looked even more pleased and said, "I really do want that stuff in writing."

H50 H50 H50 H50

It wasn't long after that that they both were bathed, and then it was time for night meds. Danny got his antibiotic eye drops, and the last thing he did before falling asleep was to say good night to Steve. "Sweet dreams, babe."

"You too, Partner." Steve had a contented smile on his face.

All too soon, or at least it felt too soon, it was morning, and another round of hospital schedule began. Steve got first shot at the little boy's room, because he was up to it, while Danny was helped to the bathroom, where he got a good look at his shiner and bruises, which had darkened overnight. When he was settled in his bad again, he asked Steve how they were going to explain it to Grace, who was coming for a visit that night. "It might scare her," worried Danny.

"Hmmm." Steve wasn't sure. "You could ask the doc to give you an eye patch or something, so it won't look quite so ... elaborately colorful?"

"Yeah, maybe that would work."

Breakfast came and went, and it was all cardboard, but at least it wasn't fish oatmeal. It looked like Cheerios in milk, but Danny and Steve both commented that it wasn't, because Cheerios had flavor, and this didn't. Even the milk tasted diluted. The half a hard-boiled egg was over-boiled by about an hour, having the consistency of a super-ball. Even Steve had trouble getting that down.

Luckily, they were saved from a sever case of Needing Real Food when Chin stopped by, smuggling in fast food he had gotten on the way to Tripler. He handed Danny a bag with two real, glorious, heavenly glazed cake doughnuts, apologizing that the malasadas were not allowed in his diet yet, because they were fried, but the cake doughnuts were not. For Steve, he brought a half a hamburger with all Steve's favorite toppings. Danny and Steve thanked Chin in unison. "I could kiss you!"

Chin smiled. "Please don't. But I won't turn down a hug. Enjoy!"

He got hugs from both his ohana and watched them transported into bliss as they ate what he had brought them.

Steve finished his burger before Danny was done with the very last crumb of his doughnuts, so he listened as Chin answered the question about how the dinner had gone last night. Chin was happy to tell them that the dinner had been spicy and delicious, and they had doggie bags in their respective refrigerators. "Then we went to a late movie, 'The Force Awakens', and Kono has fallen again for BB8."

Danny, finally finished and feeling like he could take on the world, asked, "Do you think Kono will ever want to start a family with Adam?"

The three friends were still talking about that when Drs. Cornett and Simmons both came by to check over their patients. Chin stepped out of the room, re-entering when the doctors left and continued their morning rounds.

"How did it go?" he asked, taking a seat between Danny and Steve.

Danny was quiet, but only because he was waiting for his assorted poked and prodded bruises to stop yelling at him that they had liked it better before the poking and prodding. He listened to Steve explain that he was doing better than expected, was scheduled for two PTs that day. One was going to be in the pool, and he was looking forward to it. The doc thought Danny could start PT in a few more days, after he was done with his antibiotics for the pneumonia, which was for all intents and purposes conquered.

"Yeah, but I do not get an eye patch, because there is too much swelling and my cornea needs air, which in my opinion it is not getting as it is covered by all that purple puffiness, so Gracie still has to look at my shiner when she comes to visit. I will get a bandage patch over my arm thingie, though."

Chin asked Steve when his physical therapy was.

"In two hours! I'm supposed to rest before, though."

"Then rest," said Danny and Chin simultaneously, and shared a grin.

"Danny?" asked Chin. "Would that be a good time for Kono to stop by? She asked me to ask you, and said it was entirely your call."

Danny leaned back against his pillows, and nodded his head. He felt ready. "It would be a great time for her to come by."

Chin smiled and said he would duck out into the hall and give her a call.

H50 H50 H50 H50

Chin went with Steve to his PT appointment, so Danny could have the time alone to talk with Kono. She had shown up ten minutes or so before Steve was due to leave, and the two visited. "Oh, hey," said Steve, before Chin wheeled him out, "maybe you both can stay afterwards, if you want. There was some stuff I had wanted to show you and Lou at the meeting we never really quite had."

Danny gave Steve one of those "huh?" looks and then settled down. Steve would not pull a fast one on him now of all times. Things were finally starting to heal in the ohana. Steve added, "Chin, can you stick that box on my night table, so I don't have to lift it?"

"Sure, Boss. I forgot about it!"

Danny and Kono exchanged glances. "Chin knew about it?" Neither said it out loud, but they both knew the other was thinking it. In unison they looked at the box Chin put on Steve's bedside table. They both stared at it, while Chin pushed Steve, in a wheelchair, out of the room.

Kono sat down in the seat nearest Danny's bed.

"Dang," said Danny. "This is one of those times I wish I had rubber arms that could reach that box, and no doc's orders to not lift anything that heavy, and was not as honest as I am."

"He probably has it booby trapped anyway," sighed Kono. "How about I pull the curtain so we can't see it?"

"Good idea."

The curtain made a little bulge of a detour around Kono's chair, and the two were silent for a moment. Danny broke it. "I don't know if this will, uh, change anything, but Steve officially asked me to be his partner, and I accepted. I hope that does not upset you, er, since this is very awkward."

"Well, I'm glad he asked this time. I didn't want you to quit. It is awkward, but, well, I just wanted to say, for the record, that I hope we can still be friends, Danny. I apologize, and ask your forgiveness for all the wrongs I have done you."

So there it was.

Danny's voice was calm, but inwardly he was steeling himself for the hurt that would come out of this conversation. "I forgive you, Kono," he said, then pulled in a slow breath. "I just wish I knew what happened. I guess I have to apologize too, for not noticing that things had. I ... after Steve was shot, the whole liver thing, I was looking forward to spending some time visiting with everyone, and you know how that went ..." His voice trailed off.

"I haven't figured it all out yet, but Lou was upset because you didn't shoot that guy who shot Steve, and he kept saying you weren't ... he said a lot of things. I won't repeat them, because of yesterday. I listened to him before, and when Steve told us to think while he considered if he would ask for our badges, I took the time to figure some things out for myself." Kono paused, and her eyes were sad. "I know some distance built up when I was keeping Adam a secret, and I know everyone had doubts about him."

"But we trusted you. We trusted your judgment."

Kono nodded. "I was very grateful for that, but the distance still happened. I was busy with Adam, and I stopped paying as much attention to you especially. I worked a lot with Lou, and he was not your biggest fan. It was mostly between the lines at first, but somewhere in there it became more clear. It isn't even that I agreed with what he said, it was that I was overwhelmed, so I took the easiest way to deal with tensions, and unfortunately that meant I lost track of our friendship, and I have only myself to blame. When I really thought about it, I knew I hadn't stood up for you when I should, allowed myself to believe you would not take jokes and jibes personally, and generally blew it. Bottom line, I blew it, and I don't want to lose your friendship. I said things I didn't even mean! I did want you to kill the guy who tried to kill Steve, but that was wrong of me to think that. We're cops. We don't do that."

Danny thought again about his brother Matty, and Marco Reyes. In a dead voice, he said, "I did that once. I could not do it again. I wanted to. But I could not pull the trigger. I would not pull the trigger."

Kono looked closely at Danny, clearly startled by what he had said. "When? Who?"

"Marco Reyes."

"That was self defense."

Danny shook his head. "No. I murdered him. In cold blood. Because he killed Matty. I had to live with that, every waking and sleeping moment since. The lives I've taken in the course of the job, the perps who had it coming because they were going to shoot someone, I remember them all. I can live with them haunting me. But I have nightmares about Marco Reyes, because I murdered him. That's why I didn't kill that guy who shot Steve. I wanted to. I could have. But one murder is enough. I have to look my kids in the eyes. It can be hard, sometimes."

Kono's eyes reflected her deep understanding. "Chin doesn't know, does he? But Steve does."

Danny nodded. "Steve saw me do it. His eyes afterwards ... He understood and he never blamed me, never held it against me. He has protected me. It is not something we talk about. I think Chin suspects, but we have never told him."

"I wish I had paid more attention. I might have guessed too, and then all three of us would have been there for you. No one should go through that alone."

Danny shook his head. "I told you because I wanted to explain why I pushed everyone away for awhile after Matty's death, and to explain why I was unable to kill that guy who almost killed Steve. Finally, I put the ghost of Marco Reyes behind me, and then, I was able to save Steve, so the two things I carried around with me as my biggest failures, I had made right. I hadn't been able to save the life of my partner in New Jersey, Grace. She was murdered before my eyes. The last word she said was my name. I named my daughter after her. The guilt was crushing. But then I was able to save Steve. I felt so released from years of guilt, and just then, when I could finally open up and let go of my failures, I discovered you and Lou and Chin were avoiding me. And when Steve told me why..."

"Danny," said Kono, and the genuine sorrow in her voice was unmistakable. "How deeply I failed you. I am so deeply sorry."

He reached out and put his hand over hers, and squeezed gently. "You know I forgive you."

Kono touched her forehead to his hand, and a tear fell on it. She smiled gratefully at him when she looked at him again, eyes glistening. "Thank you, my brother."

It was easier than Danny had thought it would be to move past the wrongs. Kono knew what she had done wrong, when she had begun to be corrupted, that she had taken the easy way rather than pay attention. She was sorry, and wanted to move past it and do better. And she understood where Danny had gone wrong, and why the betrayal had affected him so deeply. Danny had thought it would take a long time to trust Kono again, but he realized that he already did. He knew there would be rough patches ahead, but he also knew those would have been there anyway. They were part of life, part of every friendship. It was time to let go and accept healing. For the sake of his children, and his friends, he would let go the mistakes, and move forward.

"So, Chin told us you went to see the Star Wars movie, and went crazy about BB8. I was thinking of getting Grace a BB8 for Christmas this year. Do you think she'd like that?"

"Are you kidding me? She'd love it! She told me she wants to be Rey for Halloween!"

"Yeah, she told me that too, so I gotta figure out how to get her a lightsaber and a long stick pole thingie."

They talked like the old friends they were until Steve and Chin returned to the room, hearing instead of serious talk, a good-natured argument about which was the coolest lightsaber in all the Star Wars movies.

"No, Danny, it's gotta be Kylo's red lightsaber, there's just no arguing that!" said Kono, laughing, while Danny countered with, "Nope, no way, nyet! Seriously, think about the first lightsaber anyone ever saw. It has to be that one, so the coolest one was Obi-wan the senior's lightsaber!"

"Nuh uh, it's Kylo's with the red thingies at the top."

"But that one only exists because of Obi-wan's, ergo his is the coolest."

"'Ergo'?"

"It is a perfectly good word! You sound like Steve!"

"What does Steve have to do with 'ergo'?"

Steve and Chin were grinning widely as they pushed into the room, even though Chin didn't understand what Steve had to do with ergo either.


	19. Chapter19

**Chapter 19**

 **A/N** : Well, here it is, rather unexpectedly, the final chapter! Everything left undone in this story will carry over into the next one. It even fits better there, so, I hope this is okay.

You have all been so incredibly kind to me, and I appreciate every read, ever review, ever follow, and every Favorite astonishes me and makes me very humbly happy. I only hope this pleases you as much as your reading this story has pleased me.

CBS owns all rights to Hawaii Five-0. I only play harmlessly with their toys.

 **Chapter 19**

Danny had not heard Steve and Chin until they entered the room, and that pretty much brought a halt to his discussion with Kono. He simply said, "Obi-wan," while she responded, "Kylo, brah!" Then they both greeted the rest of their ohana. But then Steve said, "Nope, you are both wrong. Darth Maul's double bladed lightsaber. Coolest by far. Right, Chin?"

"Sorry, Boss," replied Chin. "Mace Windu's purple saber. The only purple lightsaber."

Everyone laughed, because everyone had their own opinion, and it was fun that they weren't fighting. Danny felt pretty good about the world at the moment. He asked Steve how his physical therapy went, just as Steve asked why the privacy curtain was pulled. Kono pushed it back immediately as she answered, "We found it a challenge to not look in the box."

"Yes!" corroborated Danny. "If we could not see it, we could forget about it, which is what we did. So how was the therapy? You are not wet, so this wasn't the pool one, right?"

"Yeah," replied Steve, in a fittingly dry tone. "They have this thing called a towel, Danny, very fluffy and soft, and it soaks up water! Amazing invention! So I would not have returned wet even if this had been the pool one."

"Okay, okay, point taken. So since you are not answering my question, I can only surmise that the answer is -"

Chin answered for Steve, with a grin so wide, it had all of them grinning in response. "Totally, completely gassed. Seriously, they work you in PT, Danny. Soon enough it will be your turn."

Kono was already pouring Steve a blue cup of ice water. "Here. This should help you feel better."

"Thanks, Kono. This is exactly what I need!"

Danny was watching Steve, who was sending him sideways glances, acting like a proud papa. He knew Steve would ask him about the meeting with Kono, but in private. He was clearly very pleased, as was Chin, who had gone to stand by Kono after helping Steve into bed. They were staring at the box. So Danny stared at the box as well, silently, intently, matching his gaze to his colleagues' drilling stare. In fact, Danny was not that curious, because if it was stuff for the meeting his coughing fit had derailed, he was not sure he wanted to know.

Finally, Steve caught on to the pointed stares directed at the box. "Oh," he said. "Yeah, the box! Well, a lot of the stuff is now redundant, because we are all back to being the Five-0 Task Force, but we should ... there are some things in here that I had ready in case they were needed at the meeting."

"Like what?" asked Kono, and Chin put his arm around her shoulders, because she sounded suddenly hesitant.

"Nothing bad, Cuz," he said, lending support.

Danny watched closely as Steve fumbled with the catch on the box, then began pulling things out. The first thing they saw was a recorder, and Danny was sure what it was as soon as he saw it. It was from the plane. He felt his stomach do a flip, not with any excitement whatsoever. "Danny," said Steve, "remind me to play the tape for you, the one from Grace, when you slept through her visit." He also set aside the tape of how the meeting had actually gone, which unfortunately held the coughing fit and everything that happened afterwards. That would probably never be played.

Danny was very curious to know about the tape of Grace, but knew he would have to wait to see that. It was something he looked forward to seeing. He would have asked questions about it, but this was obviously not the time.

He watched Steve pull out a lot of files. "This was stuff I thought would give us all a clearer idea of some of what Danny has been through, like the bone marrow transplant. I had Chin copy some info off the internet about what it's like, and the follow-up on that. But I'm not sure we need that, unless Chin or Kono are interested?"

"Yes," they both said. Danny felt uncomfortable, since he had been teased a lot about the difficulties of the recovery. The annual Tough Mudder obstacle race for charity had come up when he was not healed, and it had been hard for him to give it his normal effort, because his hip had been still quite sore. That was one of the times both Lou and Kono had referred to Danny as the team's weakest link. To top it off, he had taken a fall which had resulted in his ankle being sprained, because another competitor decided he was a target to take out. The team had had to help him finish the race, which they had won despite his bad hip and sprained ankle. Teamwork had won out.

Danny was quiet while Kono and Steve read the printouts on how a bone marrow transplant was done, and the recovery. Chin pretended to read it, but he had already done so when he had the articles printed out in the first place.

"Wow, I didn't know this stuff," said Kono. "I'd heard giving bone marrow is no big deal. I had no idea it can actually be a very big deal." She looked at Danny with a whole new level of respect.

Steve added, "Pain varies from a one to a ten, depending on the individual. It can feel like being stabbed by a hot ice pick, though some individuals feel very little pain, and recover in days as opposed to up to a month." He looked at Danny. "So when you said your hip was bothering you, you weren't kidding."

Danny squirmed. This was not something he wanted to talk about. But for his ohana, he would. "I would do it again in a second, mind you, because it was to save my son. I would go through it again to save anyone, frankly. But, yes, it was for me very painful. The area near a nerve was damaged, and the nerve developed neuritis, and if you have ever had that -"

Three hands went up.

"Well, then you all know what that feels like. I had it bad for a month, and then it took a few more weeks to really go away. Again, I would still do it even if guaranteed that it would be that bad."

Kono brought up the Tough Mudder obstacle course race. "You did that two weeks after the bone marrow donation." She remembered the 'weakest link' comment. "You aren't the weakest link, Danny."

"Not by a long shot," said Steve.

Danny cleared his throat and said, "We won for strongest team, and that is what means the most to me."

Chin put his hand out, and it was instantly covered by Kono's, then Steve's, and last of all, by Danny's. "To the strongest team."

"Yeah!" chorused Kono and Steve. But Danny had stayed silent.

"Danny?"

"Team, yes," he said. He held onto the collection of hands. "Even more, to the strongest ohana, the best ohana."

Four happy voices chorused, "To the strongest and best ohana!"

 **THE END**

 **A/N** : This story could have gone on longer, but the purpose of it was to heal the ohana, and it did that. There are things mentioned in this story, such as the plane recording, the recording Danny will hear that Steve recorded for him with Grace, and I had planned on one more scene with Lou. But this was the best possible place to end this story, because all the scenes still unwritten actually fit really well into the next story, the one to follow this one. It takes place after this one, when they are all back to work.

I have to thank every reader for reading this, and every reviewer, every follower! I deeply deeply appreciate that this story has been accepted! You have all been so very kind!

I hope the next story pleases you as much! It will take a good couple weeks to get it started, since I'm still clearing up a bit of research. I will see you all soon, I hope!

Mahalo,

Jean


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